FAST-SAFE FREEWAY DRIVING

Genre: home movie

Year Published: 1940s

Format: 16mm

Description: This untitled, uncredited black-and-white silent home-style movie chronicles the process behind constructing a highway and connecting roads. Likely dating to the late 1940s or early 1950s, the film, which is set in a rural area of what is likely the United States, depicts the different steps behind constructing a highway from clearing the land to pouring and flattening the concrete. The film features lots of scenes of the machinery involved from what appears to be a CAT 633C Elevating Scraper to a CAT D9 Track-Type Dozer among others. Film opens, aerial view from small plane of agricultural farmland below; Close-up of highways running through vast fielded areas (0:08). Partially cleared field, what appears to be CAT 633C Elevating Scraper drives over soil (1:02). CAT D9 Track-Type Dozer follows a CAT 633C around field area (1:42). Young boy stands to the side and excitedly observes the large tractors at work, runs into field and climbs into the CAT D9 (1:50). Close-up as perhaps father shows young boy how to operate the machinery (2:16). Number of tractors, bulldozers, and earthmovers drive through flattened area, move and overturn soil (3:26). Shot of cement plant seen across the road, cement kiln towers over 1940s/1950s-era cars parked nearby (4:31). Crane guides scoop shovel down into gravel, gravel dropped onto loading hopper, falls onto truck waiting below (4:48). Scene changes to beginnings of highway being paved, area packed with various pick-up and construction trucks, workmen set down wire screens and heavy steel track across road; Hammer in big steel stakes to hold track (5:07). Bucket attached to pulley system and concrete mixing truck drops concrete mix along road (5:32). Machine that cuts grooves into concrete (6:14). Young boy from earlier runs across work area and climbs into what appears to be similar to Adams 1950's Motor Grader (6:24). POV from driver’s seat as motor grader drives along worksite (6:05). Return to aerial view, shots of completed highways and stretches of road winding through rural area (6:55). Film ends (7:56).