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Buses are often ignored in the history of transportation because they have an image problem. While they are the cheapest form of public transportation, they are also the slowest. They are not as glamorous or romanticized as passenger rail or airlines and are often associated with underprivileged groups. Yet buses were essential to the development of the tourist industry in the Northwoods.
Early roads and vehicle limitations in the first decades of the twentieth century made bus travel to the Northwoods an impossibility. After the First World War, however, things began to change. The first charter bus service giving Chicago residents a tour through the exotic Northwoods of Wisconsin began in the early 1920s. Vehicles of the Gray Bus Line each carried 18 passengers and gave travelers a unique way of viewing the famous lakes of the Northwoods.