Yost Family Buses Got Early Edmonds on the Move

From Edmonds' earliest days, the Yost family was involved in the young town's politics, social life and business enterprises. Indeed, they seemed to be involved in just about every endeavor that helped Edmonds grow. While Yost family enterprises ranged from to water supply to , they are best known for their role in bringing Edmonds into the automobile age.

The Yost Garage at Fifth and Maple was the center of this activity. The early years of the century saw this building house a Buick and Ford auto sales agency, an auto repair business, a bus fabrication shop and a bus terminal (see Patch article "").

Despite an increasing number of Edmonds citizens owning personal automobiles, the late 1910s saw most still relying primarily on horses and foot transportation and rarely venturing far from town. But the lure of the open road was building, America was becoming more mobile and everyone was looking for a way to join the motoring public.

Allen Yost and his sons saw this need. Already providing bus transportation for the Edmonds schools, they decided to expand into public transportation. They had the shop, the facilities and the know-how, and in the mid-1910s embarked on building and operating a fleet of buses to help get all Edmonds citizens on the road. 

Fabricated in the Yost Garage, these early buses were designed by George Yost and his crew. The first, built on Ford and Buick frames, were essentially modified autos. Later versions were more imaginative, including the much-remembered "alligator" buses (see photo).

While the main roads in Edmonds' downtown core were pretty well paved over by 1920 (see Patch article ""), dirt roads still connected Edmonds to surrounding communities such as Meadowdale and Richmond Beach. These were graded and smoothed to improve auto access, but vehicles could still get mired in mud during wet weather, sometimes obliging bus passengers to get out and push.

In 1915, the North Trunk Cutoff finally provided the "missing link" connecting Edmonds to the North Trunk Road (later Highway 99), thereby opening the way for automobile and bus access to Seattle and other regional cities and towns. The ensuing years saw more roads paved over, more automobiles and more people going more places.

The Yost buses served Edmonds citizens for many years. As private automobiles became more common, ridership fell off and the Yost family shifted their energies to other lines of business.