Rockies Road Trip, 1952

In July or August 1952, after dropping my dad off at summer camp, my grandparents decided to take a road trip out west from Pittsburgh. Either they didn't take any pictures between Pittsburgh and Mt Rushmore, or the photos don't exist any more, but in any case, here's their 1952 Rockies Road Trip.

From Pittsburgh, they would have driven west to Chicago and then probably up to Wisconsin and then west through Minnesota and South Dakota. Remember, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 that established the Interstate Highway System wasn't around yet, and so you'd have to take highways with stoplights that passed through all sorts of small towns at the time. 

Here's the likely map, or as close as I could make it given that these pathways are significantly improved as interstates now, and with a best guess as to the path based on what locations are in the photos. Instead of Yellowstone to Sequoia via Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, for example, they could have traversed Idaho and Nevada and gone through Reno, Sacramento, and Fresno. 

So the first stop on this Rockies Road trip was Mt Rushmore. We know this because of the single picture that remains. The original visitors' center wasn't built until 1957, five years later, but this vantage point of the heads looks about like it does through the current flag display (from my 2015 trip).

Heading west, they stopped in Cody, Wyoming, to see the statue called "Buffalo Bill - The Scout", sculpted in 1924 in honor of "Buffalo Bill" Cody. 

Further west, they made a stop at Yellowstone National Park (as seen in my 2015 trip there).

They photographed an encounter with a curious bear, who went sniffing around before wandering over to my grandfather with the camera. The car on the left is a 1949 Ford, the one on the right is a new 1952 Chevrolet Fleetline.

 

 

My grandparents made stops at Old Faithful (top), Punch Bowl Spring (second), and Inspiration Point (last two). The first two photos were shot on color film but had badly yellowed by the time I got to scanning them in 2012 (sixty years later). I tried color correcting them using my primitive software and this is the best I could get without Photoshop or Lightroom.

 

She had changed clothes from the previous picture, so they must have stayed overnight.

 

The next set of photos is over 1100 miles away, in Sequoia National Park, about 30 miles east of Fresno. They stopped to document their stay with a picture at Moro Rock - helpfully labeled on the back - which was atop a 350 step climb.

 

Next up was the Grand Canyon, also marked with a single photo. Too bad it's so faded, I'm sure the colors were amazing.

 

Heading east, they stopped at the Petrified Forest for a few photos.

 

 

Somewhere in New Mexico, my grandfather posed with a teepee and a horse-drawn carriage.

 

The Rockies Road Trip ended in Colorado Springs, at a resort called the Broadmoor, about a mile rom Seven Falls.

 

From there, it was likely that they continued up to Denver, then went east through Kansas City, St. Louis, and Indianapolis back to Pittsburgh, in time to pick up my dad from summer camp.