A crowd eagerly files into a double-decker bus, scrambling to score a second-story seat as Maurice “Moe” Egan climbs into the driver’s seat.
Within minutes, he’s spewing a unique blend of historical facts with folksy commentary and location recommendations through a headset as he drives past downtown Salt Lake City.
There’s the Salt Palace, which retains the name it got from the rock salt used to form its original structure. The Delta Center, he points out, is about to change as it hosts the Utah Mammoth, while the Utah Jazz are poised for a rebound. The Judge Building was home to one of the more notorious crimes of the 1980s, the site of a bombing that killed stockbroker Steven Christensen.
Egan explains the history of pioneers as he breezes past Temple Square, and the early complications with the federal government in early pioneer history. As he climbs Capitol Hill, he explains the building’s history and what’s to come as construction continues behind it.
“Under construction is Utah’s first-ever state history museum, and this place is going to be awesome,” he says over the mic. “I can’t wait for it to open up. In fact, I can’t wait for any museum to open up.”
None of this is scripted; Egan uses some bullet points on a screen to help him serve as an encyclopedia on wheels, rattling off things he’s found fascinating about the city.
He’s now offering that knowledge through a new business he created, Salt Lake City Hop On Hop Off, a Salt Lake sightseeing tour bus that aims to provide tourists and locals alike a new way to learn about the city’s rich history, hoping it can help them fall in love with the state capital either for the first time or once again.
Starting at $35, people can loop around downtown — and eventually other parts of the city — and hop off at different destinations. He plans to operate it every 30-35 minutes, meaning people can hop back on at whatever stop they go to explore further, like Clark Planetarium, the Leonardo, Utah Capitol or Temple Square.
Another route coming soon will provide similar access to the history found along South Temple, the University of Utah and This Is The Place Heritage Park, while another will feature “photo-worthy” stops at night.
“This isn’t just a tour. We’re taking people straight to the soul of Salt Lake City — the history, the culture (and) the unbelievable beauty,” he said, moments before leading the maiden tour. “We’re telling the real stories: the pioneers, the dreamers, the buildings and the innovators all from the top of a double-decker bus.”
The business has been in the making for a few years.
Egan previously worked with sightseeing bus companies in San Francisco and Las Vegas and helped launch similar concepts in other big U.S. cities, but he had also gone through different hardships in life before that. Now 19 years sober, he came to Utah in 2016 to help operate the Other Side Academy, which seeks to treat people dealing with addiction, criminal behavior and homelessness.
He also started food-walk tours in Salt Lake City and Park City, which got him thinking about the lack of options that allow people to hop off a bus, linger around a specific site for hours, and then hop back on to get to where they started, or to other sites. With his wife’s encouragement, he started looking into the concept further.
It helped that he had fallen in love with Salt Lake City’s history. He was blown away by its early suffragist movement and how it had a place in building the initial internet. That’s on top of the unique buildings all around town.
“I could talk about stuff on every block,” he told KSL.com. “There’s so much rich history here, and I started just going down this (rabbit hole) researching beautiful history after beautiful history.”
Maurice “Moe” Egan and local dignitaries cut a ribbon to celebrate the launch of the Salt Lake City Hop On Hop Off tour bus in Salt Lake City on Friday. | Carter Williams, KSL.com
He also started exploring double-decker buses, eventually finding one in Seattle that he drove back to Utah to get wrapped, as he also embarked on the process to find business partners. He and Andrey Olinov settled on the business that launched on Friday, while reaching partnerships that allow tickets purchased to go toward local business discounts.
Egan says he plans to keep doing the tours himself until he’s able to find a fleet of drivers that he’ll train to learn — and fact-check — the city’s long history.
However, the idea quickly won over other people he brought it to, like former Utah Senate Minority Leader Scott Howell and Sidni Shorter, president of the Utah Black Chamber of Commerce. They loved their experiences with similar transportation options in other cities, using them as alternatives to ridesharing options.
“This is an amazing opportunity for Salt Lake City,” Shorter said. “It’s an amazing opportunity for us that we don’t have to drive all of our guests around.”
Maurice “Moe” Egan drives his sightseeing bus, Salt Lake City Hop On Hop Off, in Salt Lake City on Friday. The bus provides a mix of city history and ways for people to explore around the city. | Carter Williams, KSL.com
The initial tour left some passengers mystified. “I can’t believe he’s memorized all of this,” someone in the gallery said as Egan completed his first loop around downtown.
Others aren’t as surprised about his history tours.
Salt Lake City Councilwoman Victoria Petro, who had met Egan while discussing issues like homelessness, said she couldn’t think of anyone better to tell the city’s history. Thinking forward to future major events like the 2034 Winter Olympics, she believes Egan might be the best person to whisk visitors around so they can quickly learn everything that’s happened or is happening in Salt Lake City.
“I’m so excited that he’s going to be one of our chief storytellers,” she said. “(He is) going to be the face for so many people who get to know this amazing hidden gem in the Mountain West.”
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