Yellowstone bus runs again

BOZEMAN – More than 75 years after Yellowstone National Park began shuttling tourists around on buses, Kim Kelsey is still driving one of the 1931 rigs.

The yellow-and-black, bustle-back bus has a convertible canvas top and seats 14. On Saturday night, it served as a limousine for a half dozen high school students on their way to prom; Kelsey chauffeured.

Kelsey’s father bought the bus, one of the eight original Yellowstone vehicles, in the late 1950s, but later sold it to an Atlanta man. Many years later, Kelsey bought it back, restored it and has kept it on the family’s ranch south of Big Sky for five years.

“It was a long odyssey to get it back here,” the Four Corners resident said.

The Yellowstone Park Co. bought the first eight buses in 1931 and used them to drive tourists around the park and to the Gallatin Gateway Inn, Kelsey said.

The inn also was the site for the prom dinner Saturday.

In the 1930s, Kelsey said, “they used to drive them around the lower loop and upper loop (in Yellowstone). … Their main headquarters was at Mammoth.”

After using the buses for about three years, Yellowstone bought 100 more, he said, and has been known for its buses ever since.

The original eight buses were used for nearly 30 years. When the Yellowstone Park Co. decided to sell them in 1959, Kelsey’s dad, Howard Kelsey, bought one. Another one is still in the park, the Montana State Historical Society has one, and a man living near Billings has one, Kelsey said.

Kelsey’s father kept his bus on the family’s Nine Quarter Circle Ranch south of Big Sky and used it to shuttle guests to the airport or take people to the Ennis rodeo.

“It had been at our guest ranch since the late ‘50s. I grew up with it,” Kelsey said.

“All of our guests remembered it.”

But his father sold the bus to a man in Atlanta in the early 1980s, Kelsey said, and the man used it to get publicity for his restaurant.

“When it was gone, it was really sad,” his wife, Kelly Kelsey, said. “From the time we got married, we wanted to get it back.”

So the couple stayed in touch with the Atlanta man for about 20 years.

In 2000, he decided to sell them the bus, which by then needed lots of repairs.

The vehicle’s interior and body were restored, Kim Kelsey said, and the brakes, engine, transmission and other parts repaired or replaced.

“It’s such an unusual vehicle not many people can work on the darn thing,” Kelsey said.

Since 2002, the bus has been back on the family ranch, where it is used once a week to drive guests to dinner a few miles away.

This fall, the Kelseys are going to drive it to Yellowstone, where they plan on meeting other people who own former park buses.

“I don’t think we’re going to sell it,” Kelsey said.