The bus · a long-running argument
Furthur or Further?
Even the people who were there don’t agree on how the bus’s name was spelled, who spelled it that way, or whether the sign was fixed or broken along the way. We lay out the accounts side by side rather than pick a winner.
What the sources say
Ken Babbs (Prankster), 2012 interview
The original bus was “Further.” Roy Sebern painted that name on the destination sign in June 1964; a later repainting introduced the misspelling “Furthur.” Babbs adds that the band Furthur muddies things further.
Associated Press, 2006
Sebern painted “Furthur” as a kind of one-word poem and only much later found out he had misspelled it. Later, as the bus was constantly repainted, “the Further sign was corrected.”
Opposite direction from Babbs: here the odd spelling comes first and the standard one comes later.
Wikipedia, “Furthur (bus)”
Sebern named the bus and painted “Furthur” on the destination placard; the spelling was quickly corrected, but the misspelled form remains common, including in Tom Wolfe’s book. The second bus is labelled “Further” on the front and “Furthur” on the back, and the confusion between the two buses is intentional.
The spelling paragraph carries no citation in the article. The labelling of the second bus is cited to Kirkus and a review.
Furthur Down the Road Foundation (the Kesey family’s nonprofit)
Both spellings are “correct.” The Pranksters use both, as the mood strikes them. The Foundation settled on “Furthur” with a u because official bodies were less flexible about spelling than the Pranksters.
The Daily Beast, 2014
Describes a second, very similar bus named “Further” with an e, which Kesey bought in 1974.
Where they agree — and don’t
Agree
- Artist Roy Sebern painted the destination sign (Babbs dates it to June 1964).
- Both spellings have been in use ever since — including in print.
- Tom Wolfe’s book used “Furthur,” which helped it stick.
Disagree
- Which spelling Sebern actually painted.
- Whether the odd spelling came first (AP, Wikipedia) or later, from a repainter (Babbs).
- Whether, and when, the sign was “corrected.”
What we do here
We follow Wikipedia’s title — Furthur (the bus) — and the Foundation’s practical choice of “Furthur,” and we treat “Further” as equally valid. Search finds either spelling. The band, for what it’s worth, is a separate thing: Furthur (the band, 2009–2014).
If you can point to a dated photo or a contemporary document showing the sign, it would settle a lot — see primary sources and how to send a correction.
One bus — or two?
“There’s only one bus, just like there’s only one Starship Enterprise.”
Kesey’s point was that the bus is one vehicle however many versions exist. In practice there are two: the original 1939 International Harvester and a later bus, often written “Further.” The Kesey family’s original bus left the Oregon farm in August 2026 for a Grateful Dead exhibition in San Francisco; see the timeline.