Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Views From The River, June 1962

The alternate title of this post should be "The Curse of the Crappy Camera", because this first photo would be pretty sweet if the photographer hadn't cheaped out and purchased a camera with a plastic lens (that's my theory as to why these look so crummy, and I'm sticking to it).

Beyond Tom Sawyer Island, a rather massive construction project is in progress - the early stages of New Orleans Square. Some trucks, workmen, and temporary walls can be seen, as well as the top half of the still-rough exterior of the Haunted Mansion.


Looking at this picture gives a person the general experience of being myopic and suffering from cataracts. As the Columbia loafs in Fowler's Harbor, I wish upon a fish that the photographer had been more interested in what was to our left!

10 comments:

TokyoMagic! said...

Is that a fishing pole propped up in the middle of the dock in that first pic? Did they still have fishing on the island in 1962?

Chiana_Chat said...

Is it NOS? Looks like Chicken Plantation removal / Frontierland Station relocation / Haunted Mansion building.

Maybe it's just really crummy developing. Or the film sat a long time before use or developing. Or it's a plastic lens. Or I need to clean the screen after that last sneeze attack...

Orange Co Native said...

I think by 1962 the fishing had stopped. It only lasted the first couple of years of Disneyland 1955-1957. I think the fishing poles are props.

The fog in the middle of the picture with the Columbia I think is due to a plastic lens like Major pointed out.

Major. In the first picture just to left of the raft full of people and to the right of the floating barrel. It looks like someone is swimming in the water. The people on the raft seem to be looking in that direction as well. It looks like someone with no shirt on and the back of his head with brown hair. Could it be? Only those on the raft that day in 1962 will know for sure.

The side wall of the Haunted Mansion is going up as well. Yes. It is too bad the photographer did not pan to the left a little more for his picture of the Columbia.

Major Pepperidge said...

TM, it does look like a fishing pole, but I doubt that fishing was still available. Maybe it was just there as "set dressing"?

Chiana, you are right, it is all the things you said... maybe I am not strictly correct in considering those to be the early stages of NOS? As for the fuzzy images, I know there could be a number of factors, but it does seem like a cheap camera is as good a guess as any!

Major Pepperidge said...

OC Native, I did notice that object in the water that looks kind of like a swimmer, but zooming in doesn't help. I just assumed it must be some floating thing with a duck on it!

HBG2 said...

I don't think that's the top half (or any other half) of the Haunted Mansion in the first picture. I think that's the Sierra Tower of the Disneyland Hotel under construction.

Nancy said...

wow lots of ideas floating around here today...i like them all!!

i am surprised that you could see a truck there!

it also looks like a person to me, back to the camera, brown hair. wonder what they could have been doing??

always interesting, thanks for the sunshine; its cloudy and raining here but at least the heat is down with the sun in...been in the 90s here, and we arent really used to that!!

Major Pepperidge said...

HBG2, now that you say it, it DOES look like it's the hotel! D'oh...!

Chiana_Chat said...

Huh! Don't feel bad Maj, HBG2 may be right now, but we were right before he was. Seriously, I didn't catch it either but now HBG2 points it out, it's obvious! Oi. Weird it'd be a cheap camera; most folks with cheap cameras pre-70s shot little B&W pics, not for color slides. Maybe something happened to louse up his lens. Like he wiped it with the water in Tijuana or he took a picture of his mother-in-law.

Nancy, if you're in Florida, I don't know how you take the humidity at any temperature!

Orange Co Native said...

By George I think he is right. It is the hotel going up. I was too focused on the thing in the water that looked like a swimmer.

The Haunted House would be more to the left. Where all the trucks and concrete low walls are.