Visit us the 1st & 3rd Saturday of every month 10am-2pm
37974 Shinn St, Fremont, CA 94536
37974 Shinn St, Fremont, CA 94536
Mailing Address P.O. Box 601105 Sacramento, CA 95860-1105
Mailing Address P.O. Box 601105 Sacramento, CA 95860-1105
The photographer Crown used for several decades to document their products and innovations was Dick Whittington. Somewhere between the 1950s and 1960s their longtime employee Warren Bowen started his own photo studio in Los Angeles. He took the Crown account with him. When Warren retired in the 1980s, he gave Louk Markham his Crown photos and negatives archives. Louk then donated these to The Pacific Bus Museum in February 2024.
As you can imagine, we are still trying to figure out how to sort out what is in this collection. We do know that they have a unique filing/sorting system that is not by chassis number, as are the rest of the Crown Corporate records. So it will certainly take some time/effort for us to figure out how to cross-reference these.
This page provides a searchable lookup of our Crown Photos.
1936 Supercoach Salinas (LM C8-P6) |
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Rear “boat tail” view of a 1936 Supercoach built for Salina Union High School and Junior College.
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1936 Anaheim Elementary School (LM C8-P5) |
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This 196 Supercoach was built for Anaheim Elementary School. This was one of the first integral-build all-steel bodies and chassis structure.
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1934 Artists Drawing Super Coach (LM C8-P?) |
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Artists Drawing Super Coach
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1932 First Crown Supercoach (LM C8-P2) |
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The first Supercoach in 1932.
 
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1962 Lockheed Missiles Space (LM C10-P59) |
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A variation of the Crown “Super Transport” truck series. This is one of 3 A-590-11s built for Lockheed Missiles Space. They were the property of the US Air Force, but operated by Lockheed.
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Wide-Trac Jeep prototype ~1960 (LM C3-P11) |
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This aluminum body “Wide Trac” Jeep was developed for Kaiser Industries for consideration by the US Army in ~1960.
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Post Card See California First 1953 (LM C7-P4) |
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Open-air Ford Transit bus modified by Crown in 1953.
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Utah Parks Company 1959 (LM C10-P41) |
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1959 Utah Parks Company new sightseeing coach picture with predecessor White open-air touring bus.
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1949 A-450-11 Red Diamond Edgemont School (LM C8-P27) |
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Edgemont School District No. 342, fleet #2 shown here in Washington state, with Mount Rainier in the background.
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1949 Big Bear R-450-10 (LM C8-P25) |
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Big Bear Elementary School #4 in Southern California mountain now with chains on rear tires.
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1945 Rear-engine hercules RXLD (LM C8-P13) |
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1941 front drop frame (LM C8-P9) |
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1941 front dropped frame, mid-engine chassis with unique driveline to mounted radiator fan.
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1953 Admidship Installation (LM C8-P44) |
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This shows a 1950s amidship Supercoach with 3 narrow belt rails.
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1950s Hall Scott Installation (LM C8-P43) |
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Mid 1950s composite of a Crown Supercoach Model A-779 with it’s amidship Hall Scoott horizontal installation.
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1950 IH Red Diamond 450 Gasoline Engine (LM C8-P31) |
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Louk Markham described the photograph numbering system this way.
Let’s look at these two photos as samples:
 Warren Bowen 511-28-3 |
 Dick Whittington 06.120.1 |
First, both Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington used a similar ###-##-## format.
The second set of digits in the ###-##-## format was the roll or job number. The final digits were the photo-number on the roll.
Job#-Roll#-Photo#However, Dick Whittington generally wrote his numbers with dots and may have reversed the Job/Roll #’s: Roll#.Job#.Photo#