More People, More Buses

"We knew the kind of service the schools wanted, and we knew the service we had to give ." - Bob Beach

The rule was straightforward and simple: students had to live at least three miles from their school to qualify for public transportation.

In some American communities that were shrinking rather than growing, such a policy might have proved fatal for a school bus business. But Missoula was on the move, with new suburbs and rural residential areas emerging like dandelions in springtime. More suburbanites translated into more schools, which translated into more school bus routes, which in turn translated into more buses. For the most part, the Garden City grew steadily; so did Beach Transportation, which had to add two to four new buses a year to accommodate outlying students and those who increasingly needed mid-day shuttle rides to new kinds of classes and activities.

"We got an increase in people who lived in the Jefferson School area," Bob Beach said. "We had to move those kids to the Lewis and Clark area, and we had to move some kids into Paxson School because they were overcrowded at Jeffereson ... It seemed to be from the early to the mid-60s when things grew quite quickly for us."

In the 185 days of the 1964-65 school year, Beach drivers put 154,760 miles on their buses. The following school year, also 185 days in length, the mileage figure jumped to 185,779. By the 1966-67 school year, drivers and their big, yellow buses were traveling 195,576 miles on city streets and county roads. The mileage figure dropped to 191,303 in 1967-68, but rose to 223,172 in the 1968-69 school year.

The lower Rattlesnake Valley was developed. Numerous residents there began clamoring for school bus service. Turned down by school officials because they lived withing the so-called three-mile line, they approached Beach Transportation and arranged rides for their children on a cash basis. Eventually, growth in the Lincoln Hills and upper Rattlesnake would lead to more bus routes and more buses - 20 as of Jan. 1, 1968.

More suburbs, more school bus routes: Pattee Canyon, Miller Creek, Ravenwood, Linda Vista, Rodeo Ranchettes, Hillview Heights, Bitterroot Road, Lolo Canyon, Big Flat, West Riverside, Butler Creek, Grant Creek, Grass Valley, Westview Park, El Mar Estates, Turah Loop, Blackfoot-Potomac, Beavertail, Rock Creek, and Clinton. More school activities, more school bus shuttle runs throughout the day: music groups, speech and drama groups, vocational agriculture, science class field trips, fine arts trips. Project Excel for gifted children. Among the most important developments in local student transportation was the growing need to get developmentally disabled children to and from a host of special-education classes that had been established by federal and state legislation. Beach Transportation responded to the need by acquiring a sub-fleet of mini-buses and specially a equipped full-size unit.

At one point, as grade school and high school field trips multiplied, Harley Keyser commented to a Missoulian reporter. "From about April first to the end of the school year, it's just a madhouse around here (Beach Transportation headquarters.) Everyone wants to get out of the classroom and see all the bugs and rocks. We generally have to put on a few extra drivers." He was right then, and the situation hasn't changed.

Through the years, Beach and Keyser have relied on an annual analysis of student population in various areas of the city and county to help them with the logistics of moving thousands of students from home to school and back again. And they've worked closely with the school districts' various transportation supervisors - people such as Mark Jennings, Gene Downey, Frank McElwain and Joe Roberts. Said Beach, offering an example, "We'd do a survey on, say, the eighth graders who were graduating from Lolo Elementary or Target Range or Woodman or Hawthorne. Then we'd project that we would have 'x' number of eighth graders coming in, 'x'number of seniors graduating from high school, and that we'd be heavy on a particular route. With that information, we'd go to the school administration and say, 'We're going to be overloaded; let's look at putting another route on.' We took it on ourselves to do all this and coordinate with the school administration and board ..."

With the 1960s coming to an end, new problems, new challenges and new opportunities were on the horizon for Missoula's schools and Beach Transportation. For Beach, a company which had started with a single school bus 28 years earlier, the future was to include bigger and totally different kinds of buses. It also was to include the company's entry into the market for long distance, chartered bus tours.

This story has been excerpted and edited from Second to None: the story of Beach Transportation Co. and its buses written by former newspaperman Steve Smith and published for Beach Transportation by Pictoral Histories Publishing Company in 1986.