The Postcard Time Machine Project Begins
So here’s how this whole vintage postcard recreation project started.
In July 2024, Zach and I visited Bemidji, Minnesota, for UniCon ’24—the last one that’ll be held in the US. We stopped at a lakeside park to photograph the Chief Bemidji statue, one of many stops we made exploring the town. Bemidji’s packed with street art, oversized sculptures, and quirky finds. We took our photos and kept going.
Fast forward to January 2026. We’re at Lisa’s Flea Market in Alma, Arkansas—1,000 miles away from Bemidji—and I spot a spinner rack of vintage postcards. You know the kind: metal wire frame, rotating, stuffed with decades of roadside Americana.
I stop dead in my tracks. What treasures could be in there? What weird places could we hunt down and recreate?
We start flipping through them. Hundreds of postcards from all over the country—giant things, weird monuments, tourist traps that might not even exist anymore. Then we find more at other vendor booths, sealed packs that someone’s been sitting on for who knows how long.
By the time we leave, we’ve collected 32 postcards for $25. Random states, random attractions, no real plan except “these look cool and we might be able to find them.”
I get home and start sorting through them, spreading them out on the table to see what we’ve got.
One of them catches my eye!
Chief Bemidji. The exact same – statue…angle – spot we stood 18 months earlier.
What are the actual odds?
That’s when I knew this project was meant to happen.
The Vintage Postcard Recreation
This vintage postcard recreation starts with a 1962 postcard showing a bright orange-red Chief Bemidji statue standing near the lake, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The colors are saturated the way old postcards always are—vivid, almost unreal. There’s a concrete walkway leading straight to the statue, and you can see Lake Bemidji stretching out behind it.
The postcard was actually mailed—postmarked September 5, 1962, sent to someone in St. Louis, Missouri. Someone visited Bemidji over 60 years ago, bought this postcard, and mailed it home. Now it’s traveled from Bemidji to St. Louis to a flea market spinner rack in Arkansas, and somehow landed in my hands 18 months after I visited the same spot.
The statue looks more stylized than what’s there now—bolder, brighter, almost cartoonish. The entire scene has that classic mid-century roadside attraction vibe: bright colors, simple composition, and a “Wish You Were Here” energy frozen in time.
Our 2024 Visit
Picture it – Bemidji, Minnesota, July 2024. We’re in town for UniCon ’24, and between events, we’re exploring the town. Bemidji has this great mix of oversized sculptures, street art, and roadside oddities that we were determined to hunt down.
We find the Chief Bemidji statue at the lakeside park. It’s a dark bronze figure standing near the water, detailed and realistic, with a simple black railing around it. The concrete walkway leads straight to the statue, with Lake Bemidji stretching out behind it and a brick building visible in the background.
I sit at the base of the statue for a photo. Zach snaps a few shots, we admire the lake view for a minute, and then we head off to find the next oversized thing on our list. It’s one of many stops we make that day—Bemidji’s packed with quirky sculptures and street art, and we’re trying to see as much as we can squeeze in around the convention.
I had no idea that 18 months later, I’d be holding a postcard of this exact spot from 1962.
What Changed, What Stayed the Same
Looking at the 1962 postcard next to my 2024 photo, the differences are striking.
The statue itself is completely different. The vintage postcard shows a bright orange-red Chief Bemidji—bold, stylized, almost like a giant lawn ornament. The current statue is bronze, more realistic, with detailed carving and a darker, more subdued presence.
And they’re facing opposite directions. The original statue appears to face the water, looking out over Lake Bemidji. The current statue faces away from the lake, toward the park and the town.
The chain-link fence from 1962 is gone. Now there’s a simple black railing that feels less “don’t touch this” and more “take your photos here.”
But some things haven’t changed at all. The concrete walkway is still there, leading straight to the statue. The lake view is identical—same trees, same horizon line, same sense of space. Even the angle of the shot is nearly perfect. Whoever took that postcard photo in 1962 stood almost exactly where Zach stood in 2024.
The building in the background appears to be the same structure, just aged 60+ years. It’s still there, still brick, still watching over the park.
What happened to the original orange statue? When did they replace it? Why the dramatic change in style—and why turn it around? I don’t know yet. But that’s part of what makes this project interesting—tracking down not just the places, but the stories behind what changed.
The Postcard That Started the Postcard Time Machine
This Chief Bemidji coincidence? It’s what launched this whole project.
Remember those 32 postcards I bought for $25? Well, they cover attractions across multiple states—giant things, weird monuments, quirky roadside stops from decades ago. Some might still exist exactly as they were, some might be completely different, some might be gone entirely.
The plan is simple: find the postcards, visit the places, take the “now” photo from the same angle, and see what’s changed in the decades between then and now. Documenting America’s roadside oddities across time—what we’ve kept, what we’ve replaced, what we’ve forgotten about entirely.
Some of these places are already on our regular route between Florida, Arkansas, and Michigan. Others will require detours. A few might require full-on road trip missions. But that’s the fun of it—letting vintage postcards dictate our next weird stop.
If you’ve got vintage postcards of roadside attractions gathering dust somewhere, I’d love to see them. Email us at rightatthelight22@gmail.com, tag us on social media, or just let us know what weird places you think we should hunt down. This project works best when it’s a treasure hunt—and the more treasure maps, the better.
Chief Bemidji: The Perfect Start for Vintage Postcard Recreation
Out of 32 postcards, the fact that the very first one I really looked at matched a place we had already visited—standing in nearly the same spot, 18 months apart—felt like the universe quietly saying, pay attention.
Chief Bemidji became the starting point for what we’re calling the Postcard Time Machine Project: recreating vintage postcards from the exact same spot decades later to see what changed, what stayed the same, and what disappeared entirely.
Some of these postcards will take us back to familiar places. Others will send us down backroads, detours, and unexpected stretches of highway we never would’ve planned on our own. That’s part of the fun—letting the postcards decide where we go next.
This is the first stop in the series. You can follow the full project here:
The Postcard Time Machine Project
The road’s long. The postcards are many. The stories are waiting.
Looking for more quirky stops and roadside finds? Browse by location in our Things To Do Directory or head back to the homepage to see where the road’s taken us lately.