1937 United States

About this footage

Workers haul a wooden utility tower into place with ropes in Sacramento, and the same reels follow three men on its platform, a man tying down a tarp on a water tower and laborers bent over in a cramped underground space. California accounts for about two thirds of this 1937 collection. In San Francisco, soldiers in white uniforms march in formation, a man on a ladder installs a storefront sign, acrobats swing in an aerial act and a Goodyear blimp carries Lifeguard tires branding. Lions and tigers walk behind chain-link at a zoo in El Monte. Up north in Klamath, a steam train pulls freight cars, children file out of a schoolhouse and a bucking horse throws its rider, who then chases it. Two men harvest corn near Vacaville, and in Truckee riders in Native American costumes pass on horseback near the Tahoe post office.

The East Coast reels lean toward leisure. Women sunbathe in a garden, relax by a pool and ring dance with girls on a lawn in Southampton, New York, while men near Albany strip down for a winter plunge into a frozen lake. New Jersey footage is mostly winter. Children play in a snowy Beachwood neighborhood, and in Trenton a man and boy carry papers through the snow. Cleveland, Ohio, brings a military band and honor guard on a city street, cars out for a Sunday drive and a group watching an amateur radio experiment. In Oregon there is Crater Lake on a clear day, a sign near Bend for Uncle Clays 7000 Acre Ranch and two boys with rifles at a wooded campsite. A family poses on the steps of Bowers Mansion in Nevada, and a Minnesota child in a hooded snowsuit stands with two fluffy dogs on a birch hilltop.

Useful for stories on Depression-era construction work, summer society on Long Island, or family road trips through the American West in 1937.