(CNN) — Fairbanks Bus 142. Probably you've read about it, seen its replica on a movie screen, or recognize one of its headier nicknames.
The Magic Bus.
The "Into the Wild" Bus.
Or just The Bus.
Until recently, the iconic green and white-roofed 1940s-era International Harvester sat parked in a woodsy clearing beside a riverbank, moldering in a remote patch of Alaskan outback like the result of a severely wrong turn.
There it sat for nearly 60 years -- the most unlikely retired public transportation vehicle in The Last Frontier state to attract a single stray passenger -- let alone find literary and movie fame, a residual stream of worldwide visitors, dedicated Facebook groups and bona fide monument status.
Hauled into the wilderness by a construction company in the early 1960s as a backcountry shelter during a short-lived road project along the area's Stampede Trail, the bus would soon be abandoned and forgotten on the far side of a boggy, river-soaked parcel of public wildland attracting mainly moose and local hunters just outside of Denali National Park, about 30 miles from the nearest real road of any sort.
The closest town, Healy, was 25 miles from the bus -- as the eagle flies. Presumably, this leafy clearing in the middle of nowhere would be Bus 142's final stop.
Adventurer Eddie Habeck visited the bus in 2012.
Eddie Habeck
The bus takes an unlikely turn
That's where the bus sat in the spring of 1992 when 24-year-old nomadic free-spirit Christopher McCandless stumbled upon it while heading solo into the Alaskan wilderness along the wet, rugged Stampede Trail, equipped with a sack of rice, a Remington rifle, a pile of books and a non-conformist's thirst for freedom and adventure.
Sheltering inside the bus, McCandless would live off the land, pen his thoughts, and amazingly survive alone in the wild for nearly four months before getting stranded by an impassable river, falling ill and dying, likely of starvation, inside the bus later that summer.
That's where the bus sat in 1996, when Jon Krakauer's bestselling chronicle "Into the Wild" would meticulously trace McCandless' two-year, wayward journey of self-discovery across the country to its tragic, untimely end.
That's where the bus sat in 2007 upon the release of a long-in-coming movie adaptation, captivating an even wider audience -- including at least two dedicated Facebook groups, now with thousands of members.
The Alaska Army National Guard removed Bus 142 from the Stampede Trail on June 18, 2020.
Sgt. Seth LaCount/Alaska National Guard/AP
That's where the bus would soon be receiving hundreds of annual pilgrims from all over the globe, plodding through miles of mucky trail, fording glacial rivers, and wading through waist-high beaver ponds to pay homage to the bus's legendized late inhabitant and follow his footsteps.
Visitors would routinely get into trouble out there -- stuck, cold, injured or worse. Last year, a hiker to the bus drowned whi
