Parks Highway · the Nenana River at Denali
Atlanta → Alaska · 1990–1992 · filmed 2006
After a flood took his car, Chris McCandless went everywhere by thumb. The film is a chain of the people who stopped. So is this page.
Press and hold until a car stops. Let go too soon and it drives past.
Nobody has stopped yet.
Seven stops · real and filmed
Each car that stops takes you to a real place you can visit: where something happened to the real man, or where Sean Penn filmed it in 2006. Hold your thumb out until one pulls over.
Thumb out at Lake Mead. Nobody has stopped yet.
Which stops are real and which are filmed: the flood, Carthage, Salvation Mountain and Gallien’s ride happened to McCandless; Williamsport Road, Olney and Slab City are where the film staged its scenes. The order of the rides is this page’s, not his.
Wikipedia: Christopher McCandlessWikipedia: Into the Wild (film)Daily Astorian: Hollywood comes to North Coast – again (17 July 2006)Far Out Magazine: Exploring the filming locations for Into the Wild
No ride yet
A flash flood stops the car in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. He takes off the number plates and walks. From here on, it is rides.
Lake Mead National Recreation Area · Temple Bar, on the Arizona shore of Lake Mead
In 1990 a flash flood disabled McCandless’s Datsun in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. He took off the number plates and went on on foot.
A private vehicle pays $25, valid for up to seven days.
Bus 142 and the bus in the film
The bus in the film was built for it. The real one had a life of its own before 1992 and a long one after. Wind its destination blind to read it.
A 1946 International Harvester K5, once a Fairbanks city bus.
A 1946 International Harvester K5, once a Fairbanks city bus. A road crew used it as a shelter and left it behind in 1961, about 25 miles west of the Parks Highway. In the spring of 1992 Chris McCandless made it his shelter. He died there that summer; hunters found him in September. He was 24. His last journal entry, on day 107, is about blueberries. The bus drew people across the Teklanika River, and the river took some of them. The state carried out 15 bus-related rescues between 2009 and 2017; in 2019 a young woman drowned crossing back. The borough asked for the bus to go. Please do not go looking for the site: there is nothing there now, and the river is the same. An Alaska Army National Guard Chinook lifted it out, as a training mission, and set it on a flatbed truck. The University of Alaska Museum of the North became its permanent home in September 2020. Conservation is complete; it waits in storage for an outdoor home behind the museum.
University of Alaska Museum of the North: Bus 142Anchorage Daily News: State removes infamous ‘Into the Wild’ bus (19 June 2020)Wikipedia: Christopher McCandless
The other bus · Healy
Penn shot the bus scenes at Cantwell, about 50 miles south of the real bus, because the real one was too remote for a film crew. The bus he used now stands in the garden of 49th State Brewing in Healy, and you can climb on board.
Open daily 11am to midnight from late April to mid-September. The bus is in the garden.
Fairbanks · Healy · Cantwell
Three stops on one highway, the Parks, and all three by the road: the real bus’s home, the film’s bus and the place it was filmed.
1962 Yukon Drive, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The museum became the official repository of Bus 142, a 1946 International Harvester K5, in September 2020.
With conservation complete, the bus is not yet on exhibit; it has been off public view since October 2023. The museum is raising funds for a free outdoor exhibition behind the building.
Open daily 9am to 5:30pm from September to May; adults $23. Bus 142 itself is in storage; the Gallery of Alaska tells its story.
Mile 248.5 Parks Highway, Healy
A replica bus used in the film is now a tourist attraction at a restaurant in Healy.
It stands in the brewery’s garden, and you can climb on board to see the memorabilia inside.
Open daily 11am to midnight from late April to mid-September. The bus is in the garden.
Parks Highway at the Denali Highway, Denali Borough
The bus scenes were filmed at Cantwell, about 50 miles south of where McCandless died; the real bus was judged too remote for the production.
Cantwell is the western end of the Denali Highway, at the north end of Broad Pass; 200 people lived there in 2020.
A small highway settlement at the western end of the Denali Highway. The film’s bus site was off the road and is not marked.
The place where the real bus stood is not on this page’s map. The bus is gone, and the Teklanika River that hikers had to cross to reach it is as fast as it ever was: it drowned a young woman in 2019, and the state carried out 15 rescues for people trying to reach the bus between 2009 and 2017. To see the bus, go to Fairbanks. To sit in one, go to Healy.
The 2019 drowning in the Teklanika River, 15 bus-related rescues between 2009 and 2017, and the removal of the bus.
Anchorage Daily News: State removes infamous ‘Into the Wild’ bus (19 June 2020)
Healy and Denali, Alaska
Live marketplace results for summer tours from Healy and the Denali park entrance, the stretch of road where the film’s bus now stands. None goes to the Stampede Trail, and none should.
Live marketplace results · mostly summer
Compare toursImperial County, California · Lake Mead, Arizona
Leonard Knight built it from adobe, discarded materials and thousands of gallons of paint. His first version collapsed in a rainstorm in 1989 and he built the present one after.
Knight appears in the film as himself.
Knight died in 2014. Volunteers and Salvation Mountain, Inc., a public charity, keep it up.
It is open sunrise to sunset, 365 days a year, and free.
Open sunrise to sunset, every day of the year. Free; donations go in the box. No camping on the mountain.
Beal Road, east of Niland, Imperial County
The name comes from the concrete slabs left when the Second World War Marine Corps training base, Camp Dunlap, was taken down.
Many residents are winter visitors in RVs: up to about 4,000 in winter and about 150 all year.
The Range, an open-air stage, holds a talent show on Saturday evenings; East Jesus is a habitable art installation begun in 2007.
An unorganised settlement past Salvation Mountain. Be a guest: much of it is people’s homes.
Temple Bar, on the Arizona shore of Lake Mead
In 1990 a flash flood disabled McCandless’s Datsun in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. He took off the number plates and went on on foot.
The car was later repaired and used as an undercover police vehicle.
Entry for a private vehicle is $25 and covers one to seven days.
A private vehicle pays $25, valid for up to seven days.
Imperial County, California
Live marketplace results for desert day trips from Palm Springs that take in Salvation Mountain and Slab City. Check each itinerary.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursAtlanta and Portland
The film opens where the road began: a graduation. It was filmed twice.
The real thing: the production filmed at Emory’s own graduation on 15 May 2006, sixteen years after McCandless graduated there.
McCandless graduated from Emory in May 1990, in history and anthropology, and gave his savings of more than $24,000 to Oxfam.
Some scenes were filmed at Emory’s real graduation on 15 May 2006.
An open campus; the Quadrangle is at its centre.
The people
Emile Hirsch played Chris McCandless, who called himself Alexander Supertramp on the road. Around him: Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt as his parents, Jena Malone as his sister Carine, Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as Jan and Rainey, Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, Kristen Stewart as Tracy and Vince Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg. Two people play themselves: Jim Gallien, who gave the real McCandless his last ride, and Leonard Knight of Salvation Mountain. Eric Gautier shot it; Eddie Vedder performed the songs, with Jerry Hannan, and Michael Brook and Kaki King wrote and played the score.
The real Chris McCandless is not pictured on this page.
It premiered at the Rome Film Fest in 2007 and opened in the United States on 21 September 2007, distributed by Paramount Vantage.
Cast and roles, Gallien and Knight as themselves, Gautier, Vedder, Hannan, Brook and King, the running time, the $20 million budget, the two Academy Award nominations, the Golden Globe for Guaranteed, the Rome premiere and the 21 September 2007 opening.
11 places you can visit, in five states, every one of them by road. The Stampede Trail is not one of them.
Pins mark public places; private homes are named but not pinned.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Open daily 9am to 5:30pm from September to May; adults $23. Bus 142 itself is in storage; the Gallery of Alaska tells its story.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Open daily 11am to midnight from late April to mid-September. The bus is in the garden.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. A small highway settlement at the western end of the Denali Highway. The film’s bus site was off the road and is not marked.
1962 Yukon Drive, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The museum became the official repository of Bus 142, a 1946 International Harvester K5, in September 2020.
Open daily 9am to 5:30pm from September to May; adults $23. Bus 142 itself is in storage; the Gallery of Alaska tells its story.
Mile 248.5 Parks Highway, Healy
A replica bus used in the film is now a tourist attraction at a restaurant in Healy.
Open daily 11am to midnight from late April to mid-September. The bus is in the garden.
Parks Highway at the Denali Highway, Denali Borough
The bus scenes were filmed at Cantwell, about 50 miles south of where McCandless died; the real bus was judged too remote for the production.
A small highway settlement at the western end of the Denali Highway. The film’s bus site was off the road and is not marked.
Stay
An old family house in Carthage, now an inn, a walk from The Cabaret.
Carthage, South Dakota · Rates from the inn
The Coughlin family’s 13-room house on Main Street, on the National Register of Historic Places since 2006, now runs as an inn, a short walk from The Cabaret. Ask the inn for rooms and rates.
Read about CarthageGo there
Tours along the Parks Highway in summer, and desert day trips to Salvation Mountain.
Healy and Denali, Alaska
Live marketplace results for summer tours from Healy and the Denali park entrance, the stretch of road where the film’s bus now stands. None goes to the Stampede Trail, and none should.
Live marketplace results · mostly summer
Compare toursImperial County, California
Live marketplace results for desert day trips from Palm Springs that take in Salvation Mountain and Slab City. Check each itinerary.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWhat’s on
A free screening in Corvallis, Oregon.
Checking current event dates…
Take it home
Krakauer’s book, Carine McCandless’s own account, and Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack.
Jon Krakauer
The book the film was adapted from, grown out of Krakauer’s 1993 Outside article; the Anchor paperback.
Find the bookCarine McCandless
Chris’s sister’s own account of the family, published by HarperOne in 2014.
Find the bookEddie Vedder · CD, 2007
Vedder’s songs for the film, released in the United States in September 2007. Guaranteed won the Golden Globe for best original song.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyDates, prices, rooms and stock change: confirm with the provider before you travel or buy. A stay or tour is described as a filming location only where the card says so.
Every place and moment behind this page, with sources.
11 of 11 places · 13 of 13 Moments
1962 Yukon Drive, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The real bus, lifted off the Stampede Trail in June 2020, becomes part of the museum’s collection in September 2020.
Mile 248.5 Parks Highway, Healy
On 28 April 1992 Jim Gallien drives McCandless to the start of the Stampede Trail near Healy. Gallien plays himself in the film.
The film’s bus becomes an attraction at a restaurant in Healy.
Parks Highway at the Denali Highway, Denali Borough
The bus scenes are shot at Cantwell, about 50 miles south of the real bus.
Main Street, Carthage, Miner County
McCandless works at the grain elevator in Carthage; Penn films there and holds his wrap party in the city park.
603 Beal Road, Niland, Imperial County
Leonard Knight appears as himself at the mountain he built.
Beal Road, east of Niland, Imperial County
In the film Chris joins the winter snowbirds at Slab City, the settlement on an old Marine base, and meets the singer Tracy.
Temple Bar, on the Arizona shore of Lake Mead
A flash flood disables the Datsun in Lake Mead National Recreation Area; McCandless goes on on foot.
Williamsport Road, Tide Point, Astoria, Clatsop County
A sheriff stops Chris for hitchhiking, filmed on Williamsport Road as Humboldt County.
Oregon Route 202, Olney, Clatsop County
The Olney General Store is dressed as the Orick General Store.
3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland
The film’s Emory graduation is shot on Reed College’s front lawn.
Druid Hills, Atlanta
Chris McCandless graduates from Emory and gives his savings to Oxfam.
The production films at Emory’s own graduation.
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