New flood images from a 1956 8mm movie

Today I went to a Pike Township Historical Society meeting.   Joe Wagle of New Augusta shared a couple of 3 minute 8mm color movies his Dad made in 1956.   One was of the May 1956 flood at Traders Point.   The movies are in living color.   The stills below are grainy (my apologies) and were shot directly from the tv screen as I paused the dvd (Joe had transferred the movie to DVD so that he could share it with our group and he gave me a copy of the cdr.)   I chose to go with stills because it allowed me to freeze frame the best images of the movies.   But there may be merit in posting the movies and I may do that at a later date.   It’s kind of fun to look at the journey these images have had: first they were filmed in 8 mm.   At the time they would have been sent out for development, returned to the customer on a small reel, placed by the customer on a projector at home, projected onto a wall or screen, and put away for who knows how long (in this case about 55 years).  Joe transferred them to DVD so that he could save them as digital images and record to a computer as digital files.   The CDR he gave me was made on I-Movie.   Then I used my iphone to record these images that were frozen when I paused the movie at the images I wanted to capture.  I then emailed the images to my gmail account, cropped and enhanced the images in  paint.net and posted them to this blog.    Image

the Conarroe's Traders Point Market was located in northwest corner of Eagle Creek and Lafayette Road

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About Ross Reller

I am pleased you have expressed interest in learning more about the historic Traders Point area in Indianapolis, Indiana. From 1980 to 1982 I was employed in the PR department at Conner Prairie Museum in Hamilton County. There I learned about William Conner, an important figure in Indiana's pioneer days. A decade later I became interested in the history of the Traders Point area and was surprised to learn that William Conner had been the first land owner in the area. In 1823 he acquired, through the Federal land office in Brookville, a patent for an 80 acre tract carved by Eagle Creek and an Indian trail that was about to be named the first toll roadway through the township (Lafayette Road). Thirty years later a village took shape within this tract. A grain mill on the creek, houses, churches, stores, restaurants, and two gas stations would take shape here in the creek valley hamlet of Traders Point. By 1962 all improvements (except a farmer's co-op) had been removed by the Indianapolis Flood Control Board to make way for Interstate 65 and a new reservoir. This blog is dedicated to preserving evidence of this historic area but I will occasionally use it to discuss related topics. To activate this follow, simply click the confirm button below. If you don't want to follow, ignore this message and we'll never bother you again. I am also a member of the Old Pleasant Hill Cemetery, a non profit association still selling burial plots for those who would like to spend all eternity in Traders Point, and I am an officer in the Pike Township Historical Society and the Traders Point Association of Neighborhoods.
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