Dazzling drone light show marks Longview's 100th birthday

Sky above LCC's David Story Field lights up during gala centennial celebration

About 300 drones, moving with the smooth precision of a college marching band, painted the sky with colorful images that reflected Longview’s centennial Friday night at Lower Columbia College’s David Story Field. (See images below)

The clear skies above the baseball diamond became a canvas for complex light paintings depicting Longview Community Church, loggers pulling a “ misery whip” saw to fall a tree, the Hotel Monticello and the Longview Public Library, among others.

The drones rose from behind the right field fence to the majestic music from film “2001: The Space Odyssey.”

An audience of 200 to 300 onlookers. who had just attended a gala centennial dinner at the Monticello, clapped and marveled at the images and the computer technology that synchronized the movements of the drones and held them steady during narrations of the city’s past and founding.

The drones even created an image of the bespectacled face of city founder R.A. Long, the Midwest timber baron who moved the Long-Bell lumber Co. to the mouth of the Cowlitz River and established the first planned city in the western United States in the early 1920s,

The producer of the show was Godroneshows.com of Boise, Idaho.

Enjoy these photos and look for my thoughts about Longview and its future later this weekend in Lower Columbia Currents. Thank you for reading and appreciating my work.

Captions: The blurring in the first photo indicates how lighted drones moved into position to create a centennial message to the City of Longview. The second photo depicts loggers sawing an old growth tree. The third image is of the Longview Public Library.