A sample of a treasure trove of photos

Route 66 in OKC in 1980s

This new video features a collection of photos taken during the early 1980s by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation along NW 39th Street from Oklahoma City to the suburb of Bethany, before U.S. 66 become decommissioned.

According to Rachel Mosman, a photo archivist at the Oklahoma Historical Society, the photos were animated by J.A. Pryse into a video.

In an email, Mosman explained how the photos in the video were taken more than 30 years ago:

The images were photos taken on microfilm rolls run through a camera mounted on a vehicle. They’re in color (but we’re only capable of digitizing them in b&w). My co-worker used a program to animate a section of one of the rolls.

That’s just a small sample of what’s in the ODOT archives. Mosman explained in a recent report ODOT has about 30,000 black-and-white negatives from 1945 to 1990 in all 77 counties in Oklahoma, including all sorts of roads (including gravel), rivers, bridges, repairs, construction, buildings, industrial areas and a few promotional materials.

ODOT also owns microfilm photographic reels in full color from all 77 counties that contain a total of 651,000 frames.

That means there likely are thousands of Route 66 images in ODOT’s archives, waiting to be digitized.

I suggested to Mosman perhaps the Historical Society could apply for a cost-share grant from the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program to digitize the Route 66-related images. The program has awarded at least one image-digitization grant before — the Curt Teich Postcard Collection Archive.

(Screen capture from one of the images of NW 39th Street in Oklahoma City/Bethany during the early 1980s)

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