Ripley's Museum in St Augustine, Florida (1974)

Sifting through more of my old home movies in 8mm sound, I came across my visit to the original Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. The St. Augustine Ripley's is located in Castle Warden, an historic Moorish Revival style mansion built in 1887. Built as a winter home for Millionaire William Warden, Castle Warden later served as a fashionable hotel owned by Norton Baskin and his wife, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Since 1950 the building has been the original permanent location of Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum. After the Museum, we stop by the Castillo de San Marcos, a fort which once guarded olde St. Augustine. The Castillo de San Marcos took twenty-three years to build but, once in place, stood as the town's stalwart defender. In 1845, Florida became the twenty-seventh state admitted to the Union. The Castillo de San Marcos was renamed Fort Marion in honor of a Revolutionary War hero. We finish out the film along the waterway near the Bridge of Lions. This film was shot with the first model of Kodak's Ektasound Super8 camera which recorded synchronized sound on magnetic striped film. I used a Eumig Super8 sound projector to overlay the music. Very primitive by today's standards & not always that accurate. Along with the Fort, the Ripley Museum is still open to the public. Filmed: September 1, 1974