North Lincoln County Historical Museum has a new exhibit up! The upstairs Anne Hall Gallery has been transformed into a mini movie theater, with a 21-minute loop of home movie footage shot on the Oregon Coast in the 1960s-1970s. The reel is edited together out of digital transfers we’ve recently completed of 8mm celluloid films that have been in storage for many years. These one-of-a-kind physical films show some of the first moving images of the Oregon Coast!

Since late 2021 we have been carefully inspecting, cleaning, and repairing over 15,000 feet of 8mm and 16mm films, and preparing them for archival storage. While going through them we discovered a couple promotional films shot in the 60s and 70s advertising the Oregon coast, and hours of home movies filmed by local residents of their road trips, family gatherings, and local events (such as Fleet of Flowers). Thanks to a grant from the Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund received in 2023, we have been able to digitize these films, and make them accessible to the world!

Detours: Road Trips Through the Pacific Northwest, is NLCHM’s first exhibit with this material. The clips included in the reel were all shot between 1960 – 1970, during road trips up and down the Pacific coast from Vancouver BC, to Monterey California. You will see Oregon Coast landmarks, tourist destinations, dirt highways, families playing on the beach, and many other sights – some still familiar today, and some that are clearly historical.

We finished the digitization process in May 2024, and are now working to review all of the footage. This small selection is the first time these rare films have been able to be viewed! We plan to integrate additional portions of the footage into our exhibits, provide these reels for researchers, and make selections available online.

Detours will be on display in the museum through December 2024.