Vintage Fort Pics 1977

[Cyberdeb 7]

These are vintage slides my father took in 1977 at the Fort.  I had to digitize them so they are not the best quality but I thought you all might enjoy them.  I still have several slide trays and a metal box of slides yet to do but i believe these are the only Fort pics.  There are some River Country and a couple of the Fort Wilderness Railroad.  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152211590549779.1073741837.686514778&type=1&l=8d3ff1e411

 

 

 

[AC in A2......Aaron 693]

Awesome pics Deb!

Thanks for sharing.

[dblr....Rennie 224]

Great pictures thanks for sharing them with us.

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Trams at the fort?  That's way before my time!

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Wow!

 

That is one of the best collection of photos from the Fort in the '70's that I've ever seen.

 

Thank you so much for sharing these.

 

TCD

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

Wow, very cool :)

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

These are terrific!  Thanks so much for sharing them.  :)

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Deb-

 

Are you related to any of the people in this photo?:

 

That guy in the white shorts is awesome.

 

And the orange robe on that lady?

 

The kid with the Thor shirt could fit in today.

 

And that kid in the orange t-shirt could pass for Nick Jonas of the Jonas brothers.

 

TCD

[Cyberdeb 7]

Deb-

 

Are you related to any of the people in this photo?:

 

That guy in the white shorts is awesome.

 

And the orange robe on that lady?

 

The kid with the Thor shirt could fit in today.

 

And that kid in the orange t-shirt could pass for Nick Jonas of the Jonas brothers.

 

TCD

No, none of them are my family.  Funny thing is, my dad was a photographer and took very few pics of people.  The kids at the cart are my brother and sister and of course the family in front of the Fort Wilderness sign are my family but I have no idea who the rest of them are.  Yeah that could be a Jonas. 

[Cyberdeb 7]

I have magic Kingdom pics and other random Disney Pics from that time to post as well. 

[Memphis 105]

wow Great photos.  Meadows TP looks so different now.  Funny how many people towed with cars back then. Sure couldn't get away with that these days without killing the car.  River Country really looked crowded back then.  

[jmaul 65]

What great vintage photos.  Thank you for sharing.

 

Holy cow River Country was crowded.

[Duane 152]

Those pictures came out great... I agree with Andrew with these being the best pics of the Fort that I have seen, at least...

[Daverene 14]

It's like looking at our family photo album

[Seals 111]

Wow! I was at the Fort in July 1977. I looked and enlarged them but didn't see 15 yr old me in my red one piece swimsuit at River Country. It was so cool to see it as it was then to enhance my memories. I used to remember being in a train somewhere that stopped at a water tank but didn't realize until recently that it was at the Fort. Your picture shows what I was remembering. Looking forward to seeing more.

[caveat lector 181]

Alright....those pics are just plain cool. Especially the one with Tom Selleck

[disneylitch......Debbie 61]

I love the pictures. Thanks for sharing.

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

I really loved these pictures!  Thank you for posting!

[DaveInTN 3,247]

Wow!  I was on a cruise when you first posted these so I missed them.  These are GOLD!!  

 

My first ever trip to the Fort was in 1977.  It's great seeing how much has not changed since then....Pioneer Hall, the HDDR, the trading posts, etc.  Until getting to the River Country pics.    

[geoffdaddy 33]

Awesome pics. I love the totem poles... they should bring those back.

[5kidsmommy 18]

Those pictures are amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. 

[williemakit 0]

WOW! great old photos. I can remember riding on the FWRR and the vendor truck crusin the loops. Things where a lot less hecktic in those days

[The Troll 67]

These photos that Deb posted really struck a chord with me because I started going to DW and the Fort as a child regularly somewhere around 1974 or 1975. We were regular visitors of River Country, and, wow, these photos have really taken me back.

 

So I went out on a limb without Deb's permission and did some Photoshopping of the photos to sort of breathe some life back into them. I sure hope Deb doesn't mind I did this. I don't see why she would, but if she does, I'll take them down. In the meanwhile, here are the first of the set that I've enhanced, along with my commentary:

 

 

The above photo is one of my favorites. At first I couldn't decide whether I should start the set off with this or save the best for last. In the end I decided to start the discussion off with a bang, so there it is.

 

Take a good hard look.

 

Old photos have two undesirable qualities that require correction -- yellowing and blur.

 

Film stock yellows over time, no matter how well they're stored. Unless photos/slides are stored in an absolute airtight vacuum in total darkness, they will yellow.

 

Blur typically occurs when the photographer holding the camera depresses the shutter release. The photographer of these photos -- I understand it was Deb's father -- was a very good photographer and minimized this, but even so, any handheld camera is going to have blur, especially when using the old, slow films of the mid 1970s. My guess would be these are ASA 100 photos, but I could be wrong. If I am right, that's a fairly slow film speed but very common over the counter stuff for the time period.

 

So I needed to correct yellowing and blur. Fortunately the photo editing software I use has filters to do both -- a color correction filter and a sharpening filter.

 

Let's take a look at the photo above. Notice how crystal clean and blue that pool water was!

 

I remember being terrified by these slides, which I believe were named Slippery Slide Falls. Looking at it from the vantage of the photographer, it's clearly a "baby ride," but at the time, I was 8 years old, and going down these slides put me at the brink of a watery death. The freefall felt like an eternity to me then.

 

Anyway, one thing you will be struck by is how much information is preserved in these old photos. I mean, we'll be able to see some extreme details, and I'll be sure to point them out.

 

Next:

 

 

Deb's dad timed this shot impeccably! Notice he captured the shot right as the rider's butt has left the slide surface and has entered freefall!

 

Also notice the lifeguard stand. Notice that the line for the attraction wraps behind it and off into the distance! I can't comment about the "modern" RC -- the one from the 1990s and 200s -- maybe TCD can, but back in the 70s, RC was packed and lines stretched on for eternity. The lines for the body slides and the tube ride were indescribably long.

 

Also notice the very pretty young girl at the bottom of the photo with the long hair. Think about it -- if I had to guess, it put her at around 15 when the photo was snapped. That means she is very likely a grandma today! And yet with the photo enhancement, heck, this photo looks like it could have been shot yesterday.

 

OK, next:

 

 

This photo is especially powerful for me. I swear, if I sit and stare at it for a while, it's mesmerizing. I get drawn into it. I see myself there. It's funny -- remove the yellowing and the blur from old photos, and suddenly your memories don't seem that old or that long ago. If you take a few minutes and really study the photo, there's all sorts of things going on. Notice the lone orange umbrella.

 

Also notice the color of the water. That's about right. The water at RC definitely corresponded to the park's moniker: The old fashioned swimmin' hole. Definitely clean enough to swim in, but, really, not very clean. Somehow that added to the charm of the place.

 

OK, one more for this update:

 

 

Notice the murkiness of the water here. It appears this way because the water is much deeper from this camera angle.

 

And look at that line! Remember, there weren't a ton of entertainment options at the World yet, so there were few places to spread the crowd to. No Epcot, no studios, no Animal Kingdom. No Blizzard Beach, no Typhoon Lagoon, no awesome resort pools. Heck, no Grand Floridian, no Lodge, no DVCs! River Country was one of the Big Shows! You have to wonder sometimes how Disney World ever even got off the ground. The MK opened with no Space Mountain, meaning the place had ZERO thrill rides.

 

And another thought -- Coppertone hadn't introduced UVA/UVB sunscreens until 1980, and they didn't gain popular use until sometime in the mid to late 80s. So if you were stuck in this line, waiting for the inner tube ride, you were building a really good future case of skin cancer. Just a couple years ago I had to have a few lesions cut out from around my ear. Thanks, Goofy.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Great job with those photos, Norm.

 

And even better job with the commentary.

 

I didn't notice the long lines when I first looked at the photos, but I see them now. My experience with River Country is all confined to the late 90's, and while there were occasional lines, I never remember anything like these photos show.

 

And don't feel bad about being scared of the Slippery Slide Falls- the drop seemed pretty big to a 30-something year old young father back in the day too.

 

TCD

[The Troll 67]

Time for a few more enhanced photos.

 

Let's look at this one:

 

 

It's interesting to me that this is a place and yet it isn't anymore. It's a place in the sense that it still exists on the face of the earth and the GPS coordinates are the same. But the "place" of my memory is long gone. Think about it. This is a beach with white sands. For twenty odd years, it was a beach. I remember I was standing at right about this very spot when I told my older sister in 1982 that I wanted a computer for Christmas. She couldn't understand why a 13 year old kid would want such a thing!

 

So for twenty odd years, kids built sandcastles, teenagers worked on their tans, moms unpacked basket lunches and passed out sandwiches, and dads snapped pictures of the family. If the planned DVC ever becomes a reality, I imagine this place, what little evidence is left of it, will just be paved over, and the DVC guests will walk along the pavement, entirely unaware that so much happiness of a different sort occurred there.

 

Anyway if you're unfamiliar, this beach was along the edge of the RC "swimmin' hole." Those pine trees in the background separate RC from Bay Lake.

 

OK, next:

 

 

With sharpness filter applied, all sorts of detail popped out in this photo.

 

Notice the dude with the tattoo on his arm. You can plainly tell it's a tattoo! Interesting...no one in this photo ever conceived the mad "tattoo frenzy" of the 21st Century. When we imagined what the year 2015 would be like, we all had images of dudes with manicured hair like Neil Armstrong in spacey-looking jumpsuits and flying cars with gull wing doors. No one imagined people would be covering their ankles, lower backs, shoulders, wrists, and necks with tattoos of butterflies, stars, and angels.

 

I wonder how tattoo "artists" made a living back then?

 

Anyway, look at the raised platform with the ladder leading up to it. If you look closely, you'll notice there's actually a guest on the zip line! He's got his knees pulled up so his feet won't drag across the water. You have to wonder if an attraction like this would ever get built today. My guess would be no.

 

I've said it before, but I suppose Typhoon Lagoon is the successor of River Country. There are many similarities in the theming. I should probably visit Typhoon Lagoon more often. I wish now that I had visited RC as an adult, but I guess I always dismissed the thought, thinking it'd always be there.

 

RC really was a very pretty place:

 

 

Here, Deb's dad snapped a great shot of the zip line.

 

Notice the floating barrels. They cordoned off the zip line area from the deeper water beyond. I remember the underside of them being very slimy.

 

The zip line was pretty simple. The rider before you would grab the T-handle and ride all the way down. If you held on all the way to the end, the T-handle would hit that pole at the end and forcibly knock you off. When it was your turn to ride, you'd retrieve the T-handle manually by pulling the rope hand-over-hand overhead to "walk" it back to you. That took some time to do, which delayed the movement of the line.

 

OK, one more for this update:

 

Check out that travel trailer. Looks brand new! Remember, this was 1977. While TTs have changed a lot over the past 40 years, in many ways, they're still the same. Look at the awning and the extensible support rails on the side. They look pretty much just like the ones on my awning today. Notice the windows open out. Today, windows on TTS tend to slide left and right.

 

Oh, and notice the windows are open. Can you say, "Hot"?

 

As in, roast in misery hot?

 

A travel trailer without AC is a hotbox. Imagine it sitting out in the summer Orlando sun!

 

In 1977, my uncle Wayne came with us on a family trip to Fort Wilderness. Many years later, as an adult, I asked Wayne what he remembered about that trip.

"It was hot," he said.

 

Yep.

 

You can get a glimpse of how much shrubbery is at each site. The stuff was thick! I remember some sites on some trips were so thick, I would forget there were neighbors on each side of us.

 

*Sigh*

 

Is this fun?

 

More to come.