Vintage Yellow Buses Return to Yellowstone
By Margaret Foster | From Preservation | Margaret Foster
Outside Old Faithful Inn
Credit: NPS photo by Jim Peaco
There's a new kind of recreational vehicle in Yellowstone National Park.
After a $1.9 million makeover, eight of the park's yellow tourist buses were back in action last weekend.
Manufactured by the White Motor Company, the Model 706 buses were a fixture in Yellowstone and other national parks from 1936 until the 1950s.
An Alaska tour company sold its eight buses back to Yellowstone in 2001. Since then, the 13-passenger buses have been updated—new engines, new windows, reupholstered seats, and new convertible tops.
Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the national parks' concessioner, paid $38,000 to buy and ship each bus and another $1.9 million to refurbish the vehicles, which it will donate to the National Park Service. The one-day tours cost $87.
"This is how people used to see Yellowstone," Rick Hoeninghausen, Xanterra's director of sales and marketing in Yellowstone, said in a statement. "These touring cars traveled to train depots outside the park and were the primary mode of transportation for several days or weeks for these visitors."
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