shelter for hunters and others using the backcountry near Denali National Park and Preserve, but it became a beacon for those wishing to retrace the steps of Christopher McCandless, who hiked to the bus in 1992.
The 24-year-old Virginia man died from starvation when he couldn’t hike back out because of the swollen Teklanika River. He kept a journal during his last days, which was discovered when his body was found.
McCandless’ ordeal was chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book “Into the Wild,” followed later by director Sean Penn’s movie of the same name. People from all over the world made the bus a focal point and tried to retrace his steps.
The state of Alaska removed the bus located about 25 miles (40 kilometres) from the town of Healy after two women — one from Switzerland and the other from Belarus — drowned on homages to the bus. There were 15 other search-and-rescue missions since 2009, the state Department of Natural Resources said in August 2020 when the bus was flown out of the wilderness.
Many people have a personal connection to the bus, said Angela Linn, senior collections manager of ethnology and history at the museum.
“It’s OK that people have this huge range of feeling about the bus,” Linn said. “That means they’re thinking about it. They have opinions about it, and that means they’re engaged with history, which is a really important thing for those of us who are in the business of preserving history.”
