1981: The End of the Road for an Influential Transit Entrepreneur in the Golden State

September 18, 1981

Transit entrepreneur Francis Brunner died in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 81. He had been one of the pioneers of sightseeing bus tours along Southern California’s coast — through a segment of the Santa Monica Mountains region and near the shoreline of the Santa Monica Bay  — and was pivotal in further popularizing that area of the Golden State.   

Brunner was born in Santa Monica on December 17, 1899. His sightseeing tour efforts began in earnest in 1924, when he took over an automobile passenger service providing tours along Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Each of his tours started out in Santa Monica, with three daily round trips to Topanga Canyon and two to Las Flores Canyon. Brunner also sold one-way fares for people using the service to go to and stay at inns and camp grounds en route, and provided transportation for children attending school in Santa Monica. (The accompanying postcard of a highway in Santa Monica was created sometime between 1930 and 1945.)

For these bus routes, Brunner initially relied on Dodge and Packard automobiles that had each been modified in size to accommodate even more passengers. Brunner’s promotional efforts for his transportation service included a booklet that he prepared in 1925 and was entitled Southern California’s Prettiest Drive. When the Coast Road was built later in the decade and linked with Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Brunner expanded his service to include up to eight daily round trips along that route to the city of Oxnard. 

Brunner gave up running his own sightseeing business by the mid-1930s. He subsequently developed new bus tour programs for both local attractions and out-of-state destinations such as the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Oregon’s Crater Lake. From the early 1940s until his retirement in the mid-1960s, Brunner found work instead in the aircraft industry. Later in life, however, he returned to his transit roots and helped create a bus service transporting people throughout the region to concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.  

Image Credit: Public Domain

Additional information on Francis Brunner and his sightseeing bus tours enterprise is available at BUChapter05-v1.pdf (coffmanbooks.com)