COLORADO—Satellite imagery seen in Google Earth allows you to explore the earth’s river systems, oceans, forests and other natural wonders from your living room chair, but they are still no substitute for aerial photography for a cost-effective, high-resolution image of the earth’s surface. Aerial photography remains an essential tool in landscape and environmental studies.

The Forest Service owns approximately 3.5 million frames of 9”x9” aerial photography acquired from the 1920s through 2010. The agency established the National Historical Aerial Photography Preservation Project to curate this collection. However, it will be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration for permanent storage by Jan. 30, 2028, becoming inaccessible. Before the film rolls are transferred to NARA, they needed to be converted to digital format by being scanned into high resolution digital files. Another pressing issue? The film is deteriorating and becoming unstable.

Historical aerial photography program leader Gary Nebeker assumed the responsibility of digitally scanning and cataloging the film rolls and associated flight indexes so that they can be used to perform geospatial analysis.

Beginning in 2018, Nebeker turned to business administration students enrolled at Weber Basin Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center to catalogue, scan and bar-code 1,853 flight reports and 12,000 flight indexes. In February of this year, after years of working with Weber Basin students, Nebeker knew that if he was looking for young people with an amazing work ethic to look no farther than Weber Basin. He reached out and asked for their help when, within a tight schedule, the collection stored in Salt Lake City had to be moved to a temporary vault at a warehouse in West Valley, Utah.

In late February 2022, nine Weber Basin Job Corps students and four staff arrived to unpack, catalog and shelve 15,000 aerial film canisters. The Weber Basin Team knew to arrive on-site well-rested for the task ahead because it had a seemingly impossible deadline to make. Ultimately, the team’s speed, accuracy and attention to detail allowed it to beat its four-day deadline by two days.

Although the students’ job was straightforward, there were plenty of educational opportunities for them to learn about the role of aerial photography in providing historical context for agency projects. They also had a crash course on the challenges of preserving images in decaying film stock. “They were trying to save the film from all the different forests. I learned that if the film rolls smelt like vinegar that it meant they were dying,” said Weber student Ashley Crownover.

A benefit of converting the images into an electronic format is they can be indexed and shared with a larger audience, which isn’t possible with paper prints. This treasure trove of information helps provide historical context for project work on national forests and grasslands. The film can be used to support a variety of projects, including forest inventory, mapping and surveying of administrative sites, campgrounds, timber sales, mining and archeological sites.

Weber Basin Job Corps students appreciated the opportunity to contribute to a project that will impact the work of national forests and grasslands across the country. “The job was a simple exercise in organization and comprehension of labels and instructions,” said Weber Basin student Chad Thompson. “I found it immensely satisfying to slowly watch the shelves fill up while we sorted through the racks. All said and done, I greatly enjoyed the job and would happily do similar ones again.”

Going forward, Thompson and his fellow Weber Basin students are almost certain to be called in to lend further support. Although over 2,700  canisters of film have been scanned, 14,427 remain. The film archive has already had to be relocated twice to new facilities and its future home is uncertain. No matter what the task it may be called on to assist with—scanning, moving or organizing, like all the CCCs, Weber Basin Job Corps’ can be counted on to respond with, “Yes, we do that!”