Bus 84 — Then & Now

one driver · one bus · seventy summers

Our grandfather, Phillip Shoultz, drove Bus 84 for the Glacier Park Transport Company in the summer of 1954. He wrote his bus number in pen on the title page of his Drivers' Manual — you can still see it there: “Bus 84.”

Phillip Shoultz leaning against red Bus 84, Glacier National Park, 1954 — 1954. “Phil — good old bus #84. Glacier Nat'n Park, '54.” That's the caption in the family album, and that's Phil: white shirt and tie, exactly as pages 258–259 of his manual required, leaning on the bus he drove down these very highway logs all summer.

Phillip Shoultz in 1994 in front of a yellow vintage White bus in Skagway, Alaska — 1994. Forty years later, in Skagway, Alaska, Phil found an old friend: the same model of White Motor Company bus, repainted for street tours. The album caption reads, “The buses are still around.” He would know.

Bus 84 in 2024 at Logan Pass, Reynolds Mountain behind — 2024. Seventy summers after Phil parked it, the family went looking — and found Bus 84 itself, restored and still carrying passengers over Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. The mountain behind it is Reynolds — one of the horn peaks his manual taught him to point out (Glaciers and Glaciation, page 222).

Eric and daughter with Bus 84, 2024 — 2024. Phil's grandson and great-granddaughter with his bus. Same number on the cowl. Same roads outside.

Red bus 102 in Glacier National Park, 2024 — 2024. The reds at work in the park today — Bus 102 loading up. The fleet Phil drove, built in 1936–1939, is the oldest touring fleet of its kind in the world, and it is still running his routes.

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