Into The Wild Bus Heading To Anchorage To Be Displayed

In June 2020, the abandoned Fairbanks city bus that doomed adventure seeker Christopher McCandless made famous in John Krakauer’s book Into The Wild and the 2007 Academy Award-nominated film of the same name – even today Emile Hirsch’s performance as McCandless remains inspiring – was airlifted out of – well – the wild. Too many fellow adrenaline junkies wanted to follow McCandless’s lead, but several got lost along the way.

Now the nomadic bus will have a permanent home as a tribute to what made it a tourist attraction. Here’s more from the Fairbanks News-Miner:

Now, the snub-nosed hulk rests in a heated building overlooking the far-north town through which it carried passengers in the 1950s. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Engineering Learning and Innovation Facility on campus, engineers, conservators and exhibitors are prepping the bus to again sit outdoors, one mile up the hill to the west.

The UA Museum of the North team, led by Angela Linn, senior collections manager for ethnology and history, will work on the bus in the engineering building.

Linn and Roger Topp have been working hard to determine the condition of the 75-year-old bus. As they walked around it, people peered down at them through the windows of a second-story coffee shop that make up part of the west wall.