For a fee of ten cents, this early 1900's auto bus transported riders from downtown to the fair grounds, about one and one half miles north of the City Hall.
[Wexford County Historical Society & Museum

Thanks to Cliff Sjogren at the museum, we now know that this bus was most likely manufactured by the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company in Pontiac MI between 1902 and 1909.

Goodwin's Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) April 28 1906 reported that the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company had contracted to provide its 20-passenger sight-seeing motor cars to the American Sight-Seeing Coach Co., which controlled sight-seeing enterprises in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, St Paul, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City and many other principal cities.

Very similar buses were operating in Buffalo NY, Chicago IL and even further afield in Seattle WA (see below); a range of other sightseeing vehicles were also operating in the early 1900s (see below).

This photograph from the Oshkosh Public Museum shows a Washington DC tour bus. Signs on the side read: " All Around Washington Auto Co./Starting Point 14th & Penn. Ave NW. ..."; " Sight Seeing Auto/999/Better Than the Rest." and an almost identical 999 winged wheel logo to our photograph.

Thanks to Sue Budlong in Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.A. for finding an advertisement for the Automobile 999 tour company in the Washington Post of September 17, 1905. It proclaims 'The most COMPLETE, PERFECT and SATISFACTORY tour of the Capital City, in the most comfortable and best-equipped of the sight-seeing coaches.' They share the column with their competitors who warn readers: 'Don't be misled by cheap imitations of our superior and original service'.

Joseph was born 1871 at St Columb in Cornwall. He was a miner and steel plant worker who worked extensively in the north-east US, became a US citizen, died at Tuscola in 1942 and was buried in Newton-Compau cemetery. He worked in the US apart from a short period between 1910 and 1920 when he returned to the UK and worked on his brother's farm. A grafter rather than a sightseer I would have thought. Compare his passport photo taken in 1920 with the best match on the bus.

Harry was born at St Columb in Cornwall in 1874 and died 1913 in Cornwall. He was a black sheep of the family, in and out of the US between 1900 and 1912, getting divorced from his first wife at some stage and marrying his second in Canada. He seems a better candidate for sightseeing and it's just possible that his second wife is also in the picture. Variously recorded as traveller and stock salesman. Compare a photo taken at the time of his first marriage in 1900 with the best match on the bus.