1969 United States

About this footage

Kids play baseball under pennant flags in Woodland Hills, California, and the same family films an Impala on the highway, a mid-century living room with sofa and lamps, and a drive past suburban houses. California fills more of this 1969 collection than any other state. In Los Angeles there are palm-lined roads, an apartment block with repeating balconies, and a woman in a green dress reading on her porch. At Yucaipa, men look over a propeller plane, a small blue airplane sits on blocks, a wing shows the registration N2228, and a pilot sits in a single-engine cockpit. Lake Tahoe reels show a family hiking a rocky trail and a monkey in a white suit riding a yellow watercraft. In Hawaii, a woman dances hula in a purple dress, men cover the smoking imu, and old cars park outside a shop in Lahaina.

Spring floodwater covers Minnesota. Grain silos stand in water on a farm in Savage, sandbags line a flooded area in Rockford, and people in Saint Paul watch the swollen river under a bridge. Later in the year, a 4-H parade marks the end of the season in Mabel. Ohio families filmed high school football at night, youth players tackling, graduates crossing a field, and a snowmobile pulling a sled over ice. Holland, Michigan, has its tulip lane, and in Chicago a boy in a red vest opens a wrapped gift. Out West, groups raft rapids and gather at a canyon waterfall in Utah, while Arizona reels hold a rowboat on Lake Canyon, a giant fake dinosaur, and a sign reading 'Shades of the Old West.' Nebraska appears mostly through the windshield, on highways across open plains.

Useful for stories on the 1969 Minnesota floods, private flying in Southern California, or Friday night football in small-town Ohio.