Ironically, while Alexis de Sakhnoffsky’s designs emphasized streamlining and speed, the 14-passenger bus he drew up for White to sell to tour operators in Yellowstone—one of which will cross the auction block this fall—was intended for a far more leisurely pace.

Until 1916, visitors to Yellowstone National Park had just two options for getting around the vast space (other than horseback, of course): private automobiles and horse-drawn coaches. As Robert Goss at GeyserBob.com points out, “the mixture of the two foreign modes of travel proved incompatible,” so after the end of that season, park officials declared that horse-drawn coaches would no longer be allowed to operate within the park.

That suited Harry Child just fine. Or, more appropriately, park officials’ decision to eliminate all but one of the transportation companies—ostensibly to further reduce chaos on park roads—suited him just fine. Child owned the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company, one of the coach operators before the ban, and was able to transition to automobile-based transportation rather easily by purchasing 100 3/4-ton open-top White TEB buses, 17 White seven-passenger cars, and several support trucks.

Let's be honest, these convertible buses are just really cool.