A flashback to Arizona highways in 1974

"Blazing Saddles." "Young Frankenstein." "The Godfather: Part II."

All great movies and all connected to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Huh?

See, those were some of the top movies released in 1974… the same year that ADOT made its debut.

On July 1, 1974, the State Legislature combined the Arizona Highway Department, Arizona Aeronautics Department and motor vehicle services agency into one entity and the Arizona Department of Transportation was created.

That makes this our 50th anniversary.

While we're certainly not filmmakers - we have won an Emmy, though - we wanted to share what Arizona's highways looked like in 1974. So, we gathered all the photos we could find from 1974 and turned them into a video.

As you'd expect of photos from that time, we found a mix of black-and-white and color photos. Some of the locations are identifiable and nearly identical to how they appear today.

Every good movie needs a killer soundtrack. For this one, we again went back in time, looking for the top songs in the Billboard Hot 100 on July 1. The Stylistics' "You Make Me Feel Brand New" seemed awfully fitting for us and Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" shared an album with Arizona-favorite "Carefree Highway." But we wanted a song that moved faster and 1974's "The Loco-Motion" by Grand Funk Railroad fit the bill and we found an instrumental version of it.

Wonder what the top movies and songs will be when ADOT marks 100 years in 2074?

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