1938 United States

About this footage

A woman holds up the fish she caught at Bucks Lake, and the California reels mostly stay in the woods. Water rushes between the trees, a jet of water bursts from the forest floor, and men lead a pack mule up a wooded hillside. Two men camp with a tent and a horse. At El Dorado City a boy catches a fish from a porch, two boys pose with a big one, and a mother does the washing while her son plays with the dog. Other stops include Emerald Bay seen from Inspiration Point, a steel bridge over the river at Oroville, and a wooden building with a clock tower cupola at Fort Ross. Farther north, water runs through the Bonneville Dam spillways in Oregon and fish fight the current. In Washington, cranes work on a large steel bridge, boats race on a lake, a skier is towed behind a motorboat, and a group of men watch a toy airplane crash in a field.

The eastern reels are quieter and closer to home. In Winchester, Maryland the camera keeps coming back to the garden: tulips along a stone path, stone urns among clipped shrubs, white flowers against a stone wall. The same houses turn up again under snow, and Martinsburg, West Virginia has its own snowy street. Blackwater Falls spills over dark rock. At Atlantic City, pedestrians walk the boardwalk under an Old Overholt sign while a rider takes a horse along the beach, and elsewhere in New Jersey women sunbathe on wooden lake docks. A toddler digs in the sand on a Cleveland beach. At Mount Washington in New Hampshire the camera pans the range from the summit, and workers load luggage at the train station.

Useful for stories on Depression-era family vacations, dam and bridge building in the Pacific Northwest, or small-town gardens and winters in the Mid-Atlantic.