The Vanishing of Riverton’s Class of ’99: 22 Years Later, a Haunting Discovery Resurfaces, Reopening a Mystery
It was meant to be a celebration of youth and promise of a graduation trip before adulthood began. In June 1999, 28 Riverton High seniors and two chaperones boarded a yellow school bus bound for a campground near Oregon’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. They never arrived.
Search parties scoured highways, logging roads, and riverbeds for months. Not a trace was found. Families clung to fading hope as years passed, and the “Riverton Class of ’99” became a ghost story of a whispered legend of the Pacific Northwest.
Then, in the fall of 2021, the forest finally gave up one of its secrets. A Hiker, Daniel Reeves stumbled upon a rusted bus half-swallowed by vines deep in the woods. Inside were torn seats, scattered backpacks and relics from another era, cassette tapes, Polaroids, a yearbook signed “See you this summer!” Authorities soon confirmed the unthinkable: it was the missing bus.
Skeletal remains of at least 15 people were found in and around it. Some were seated as if waiting to be rescued; others had fallen where they tried to flee. Blood traces, scorch marks, and a forced rear exit hinted at chaos and fear.
Among the recovered items was a journal belonging to class president Amy Carlson. Its final entries spoke of sickness, panic, and “something watching us in the woods.” The last words, smudged and frantic: “It’s coming back tonight.”
The discovery has reopened one of America’s most haunting cold cases. Families who once prayed for miracles now face grim reality, and new questions. Why wasn’t the bus ever found in 1999, despite extensive searches? What or who drove the students to terror?
Theories abound. Some investigators suspect a wrong turn down a collapsed road and a desperate attempt to survive. Others whisper about predators, human or otherwise. Online forums resurrect talk of cults and folklore creatures said to roam those woods.
Sheriff Karen DuPont, leading the reopened investigation, calls it “a tragedy layered in mystery”. Forensic teams are still identifying remains, while 13 people, nearly half the group, remain missing.
To Riverton, the discovery has reopened old wounds. Memorials have returned to the high school gym. Parents who spent decades keeping their children’s rooms untouched now prepare to bury them.
“I prayed he’d walk through the door one day. Now I just pray for answers” – said Maria Lopez, mother of graduate Miguel Lopez.
The Rogue River-Siskiyou forest remains beautiful and silent. Beneath its canopy, the rusting bus sits like a tomb, guarding secrets from a vanished class and a generation left behind. And somewhere out there, perhaps, the rest of the story still waits to be found.
