What was driving Pierce County like in the ’80s? These videos are a trip back in time
It’s true what they say about nostalgia: it’s a heck of a drug. The older I get, the more addicted I become.
Objectively, I’ve reached the halfway point of my life — give or take. I’ve also dropped all pretense of trying to be young or cool. I like the same music I listened to in high school. I don’t like jeans that stretch or hats with bills that don’t bend. If given the chance, I’d eagerly trade our gadgets and gizmos for a simpler life, or at least a time when internet access required a squawking modem and a CD-Rom that showed up in the mail.
Want to captivate me? Want to instantly grab my attention — and suck me away from whatever I’m doing?
Take me back. I bite every time.
That’s just what happened to me this week when, by chance or algorithm, I stumbled across a trove of old videos from the 1980s and ‘90s — hours of them — recorded by the Washington State Department of Transportation while driving the state’s highways. And as boring as that might sound, I was hooked. What did downtown Tacoma look like from the passenger seat in 1982? I’ll watch. Drive by the Tacoma Dome on Interstate 5, back when the T-Dome was under construction and the freeway wasn’t? Yes, please. See South Hill in Puyallup before it was a hellscape of congested sprawl? I’m in.
I guess what I’m trying to say is … I’ve spent a lot of time online this week (so maybe I take that dial-up bit back).
Since I’ve already admitted I’m middle-aged, I suppose there’s no additional shame in acknowledging all of this happened thanks to Facebook. There I was, scrolling, when I encountered a post by John Hodgson, a 53-year-old old-school local music guy who I know — mainly in the social media sense of the word — from my days working for long-defunct alt-weeklies.
Hodgson DJed around town for years, once ran a cool local coffee shop and all-ages club with his wife, Char, and has forgotten more about Tacoma music than most will ever know. More important to this story, he’s also something of a Pacific Northwest history buff, and during what he described as his typical Internet activities, he hit on a YouTube channel where, over the last year or so, dozens of the videos have been uploaded.
Hodgson told me he discovered the YouTube channel — which is run by the anonymous user @highwayvideos3434 and now has almost 2,000 subscribers — about a month ago, searching for “vintage travel Tacoma.” Attempts to reach @highwayvideos3434 were unsuccessful, but the channel attributes the videos to WSDOT, and the Washington State Archives, which is exactly where they’re now held.
Hodgson’s response to the videos was similar to mine, it seems.
He estimates he’s now spent about 20 hours watching, and counting.
“I’m a NW pop culture enthusiast … and found myself watching them over and over. They’re nostalgic and surreal at the same time,” Hodgson told me. “Each video seems to trigger buried memories.”
As strange as that might seem, Hodgson is exactly right. If you grew up in the Pacific Northwest — and you harbor vague memories of what it was like — the videos offer a hypnotic trip back in time. Even after speeding up the playback speed (which I highly recommend), I found myself entranced, watching the miles go by. Every long-gone regional bank branch sign, familiar fast food joint and sputtering Datsun was like discovering a photo of an old family friend.
Washington State Archives
The videos, it should be noted, aren’t newly released, even if YouTubers and befuddled, old social media users (like me) continue to find them for the first time.
Asked about the footage, a spokesperson for the Washington State Archives pointed me to a 2022 Facebook post from the agency — including a video taken while crossing the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge in 1982 — explaining that WSDOT captured video of “thousands of miles” of state highways over the years, much of which is now part of the state’s collection. According to the post, the purpose of the videos was to document everything from the number of lanes to the pavement types used and the posted speed limits. The state archives currently include still frames — taken every 1/10th of a mile — from 1972-1981, and videos recorded by WSDOT between 1982 and 2001, according to information provided by the office.
Interestingly, to this day WSDOT captures still images of the state highway system every two years, according to the agency’s website. While the agency doesn’t maintain videos of roadways these days, the images “provide a visual record of each highway as well as its immediate environment and allows for a safer and more cost-effective way of monitoring and maintaining our highways,” the post indicates.
The post notes that WSDOT staff use the images “for the purposes of asset management, roadway data coding and roadway condition assessment, planning, etc.”
That’s all well and good, but for my money, the archival videos are the real attraction, and it has little to do with data coding or planning.
Even the seemingly mundane things they manage to capture — like downtown Enumclaw in 1989, Puyallup’s River Road (and the old Hi Ho Shopping Center) in 1982 and southbound Pacific Avenue at the tail end of the Reagan presidency — felt remarkable when they crossed my screen the first time.
For his part, Hodgson said he plans to keep watching, too. There’s just something about seeing the Pierce County of his youth that’s seductive, and at the same time, comforting.
I couldn’t agree more.
“I think (the videos) hold a special allure because they are routes that are familiar in the present and simultaneously familiar as nostalgia,” Hodgson said.
“There’s anticipation for what’s around the bend. Is that place I remember real?”
The videos, at least, suggest it is.
The older I get, the nicer that is to know.
This story was originally published March 4, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
