1974 United States

About this footage

A child holds up fingers for her age with a bunch of balloons in hand, and the Gainesville, Florida reels keep coming back to birthdays. Kids tear into wrapped boxes, a cake sits on the table, and a blonde boy goes down a backyard slide. A woman carries a baby through a screen door, a grandmother sits with a toddler in red, and a father and son play in the sand at the beach. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, yellow road graders level soil and a loader fills a dump truck. Summer there means children diving into a pool, young women putting on sunscreen at a motel with a station wagon parked outside, and a small white passenger boat moving down a calm river. In Lincoln, Nebraska, a man holds up a Father's Day sign in the garden.

Most of the travel footage is from Colorado. Cars climb snowy roads into Vail, a school bus crosses a bridge in town, and skiers wait in line at a mountain lodge. Colorado Springs gives the Broadmoor Hotel and its bell tower over the lake, while Denver has Larimer Square and streets of classical buildings. In South Dakota a family stands at Mount Rushmore and a car heads into a dark tunnel on a mountain highway. Expo '74 in Washington appears as an orange gate sign, a geodesic dome fountain and a Chinese junk boat. In Irvine, California, the camera follows chimpanzees swinging, giraffes walking a road and scarlet macaws in the trees. A Boston circus has an elephant carrying a tiger on its back and acrobats on the trapeze. There is also a Cleveland skyline at dusk and a drive through autumn color in Minnesota. Many clips are logged only as United States, since nothing in the picture shows the state.

Useful for stories on Expo '74 and American road trips, Colorado ski towns, or children's birthdays in the 1970s.