Industry News
The abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless, 24 died in 1992, which was removed from its location by the Teklanika River, Alaska, has found a new home at the University of Alaska Museum of the North for long term curation and exhibition. Bus 142, an encapsulation of many facets of Alaska, saw life in the military, as a school bus, and as part of the Fairbanks transit system before serving as a shelter on the Stampede Trail. The bus is a story not just of one particular person who spent the last few months of his life there. It is a history of interior Alaska and mining, the occupation of wilderness, and personal exploration.
In 1992, Christopher McCandless spent 118 days living in the bus after hiking into the wilderness on the Stampede Trail, only to die there when the same river blocked him from returning. John Krakauer’s novel “Into the Wild”, and later a movie of the same name, telling the McCandless’s story (which began as an article for Outside) made the site a popular pilgrimage for tourists. Unfortunately many hikers who wanted to pay homage were utterly unprepared and unaware of the harsh reality of the Alaskan wilderness and weather and got into trouble. Between 2009 and 2017, there were 15 bus 142-related search and rescue operations and two young women drowned in the Teklanika River, one from Switzerland in 2010 and one from Belarus in 2019, leading to the decision to remove bus 142 from its location in June 2020.
The museum’s goal is to make Bus 142 the centerpiece of a free, outdoor, public exhibit at the museum that will allow people to safely experience all aspects of this vehicle’s history. Taking the bus from its fresh off the trail, raw condition, and preparing it for long-term public exhibition is an involved and lengthy process. Over the course of several years, while the bus is located in the ConocoPhillips Alaska High Bay Structural Testing Lab at the Joseph E. Usibelli Engineering Learning and Innovation Building (JUB) on the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) campus, the University of Alaska will begin the process of conserving the bus and documenting its rich history.
The University of Alaska is aiming to raise the necessary funds to create the public exhibition on the UAF campus. Since October 2023 bus 142 is no longer on public display until the bus has been moved to its new location behind the museum. From October 2021 to October 2023 the bus was on public display thanks to a two-year partnership with UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering (INE) and the Arctic Infrastructure Development Center (AIDC). The University of Alaska will undergo a multi-year project to conserve the aging bus that has been subject to years of vandalism before it will return to public display. The bus will be exhibited in an outdoor space near the Museum, on the UAF campus. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience the history safely, for the first time in thirty years.
