First Motorized School Bus in North Carolina

In nineteen seventeen, Pamlico County Schools put a motorized bus onto these rural roads, among the earliest in North Carolina. It carried children in and around the town of Oriental. Before that day, horse-drawn wagons had been the only option for transporting students across one of the most rural counties in the state.

The switch to motorized transport made it possible to consolidate scattered one-room schoolhouses into larger, centralized schools with more professional staff. What began here as a local experiment became standard across North Carolina and the nation.