U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon
Left: Shore’s shot from July 21, 1973
Right: My shot from January 14, 2017
Back from vacation for a while and back to editing (which I am still very behind on from the summer). We are in for a big snow storm here in New England, so I am hoping to get lots done over the next couple of days!
This location was the one I was most looking forward to. It has always been one of my favorite Shore photographs and I knew it was sure to be a gamble with that amazing billboard. Sure enough, it was gone. We were there in January with a few inches of snow covering the ground...remnants of that billboards could have been hiding underneath, but it is highly doubtful. Due to the disappearing billboard, it made this shot a little bit harder to find, but we did it! We drove back and forth a couple of times on US 97...knowing very well that Shore was traveling South, and looked North into his rear view mirror to find this scene. With Brian driving South, I hopped in the back seat and eagerly scanned the landscape out of the back window. I first used the size of the mountains to get an accurate distance. I knew there were some buildings in the background of Shore’s photographs so we searched for those (see image above) and found them...we then knew we were in the right spot! Lastly, we looked for a gate, never expecting to find it...but there it was with snow and tall winter grass all around it. Klamath Falls = success!