YouTube Video showing I-24 southbound over Monteagle in 1976

[RoadWarrior56]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ3RyvvP_wg

The YouTube Link above is for the first YouTube video I ever posted.  It was an old Super 8 mm movie I took at age 19 on my way to Florida in May 1976.  It shows I-24 southbound as it was then.  The first half of the video is climbing the north side.  That section of the roadway is much as it is now, except that the vegetation was less thick in those days, and it shows a curbed median treatment near the top of the mountain that was converted to a concrete median in the early 80's.

The second half of the video is historically more intersting.  It shows the the old road going down the mountain.  This is the old two-way section of US 41/US 64 that had been restriped for one-way operation.  This movie was taken approximately 3 years after the new northbound side was completed.  You can even see where the old double-yellow lines had been covered up, as well as an old US 41 and US 64 sign assembly.  As you can see, the road was steeper and curvier, and there were narrow shoulders and no runaway truck ramps.  This section of roadway was gutted and rebuilt in the mid 80's to become what it is now.

My apologies for the mediocore quality of the video.  The camera was not great in the first place, my hand was not always that steady, and 34 years of deterioration of the films color did not help either.  But it is still good enough get a feel for the road and the vehicles of the mid 1970's.

[mightyace]

Nice video even with the caveats.

It is interesting to see that even with the modernization, I can still recognize where I was on the modern "southbound" I-24 EAST.

[codyg1985]

Thanks for posting this!

The south side decent looked like it had just been converted to one-way operation. There appeared to be many places where vehicles would pull off for views or if they broke down.

[VFRinTN]

Nice vintage video!  Thanks for sharing a flashback of this area since I can recall traveling back and forth across this stretch as a kid during roughly the same time period prior to my family's move from Marietta, GA to Clarksville, TN in 1977. 

Both sides of Monteagle are on my aerial photograph "to-do" list at some point...  A friend and I have flown into KCHA in Chattanooga a couple of times out of Springfield, TN where we are both based for our personal flying but neither occasion was favorable for shooting an images...  Soooomeday! 

[Bryant5493]

Very nice footage. I favorited it on YouTube and added it to my Facebook roadgeek page, Southern Roadgeek. Again, well done.


Be well,

Bryant

[brownpelican]

Neat!

[Brian556]

I have a video taken by may parents in 1985 of the westbound lanes going uphill. Traffic was confined to the left side of the road, and a concrete center barrier was in the process of being removed. I assume this is because the eastbound side had just been completed, and the two-way setup was being removed. I don't currently have the stuff nessessary to convert it to digital.