If you’ve ever rolled into Bedford Camera & Video in Oklahoma City, you’ve probably noticed the tall mural panels mounted along the brick exterior. They’re loud in the best way—big letters, big sky, and snapshots of Oklahoma that feel like they belong on a travel postcard… or stitched into the lining of every road trip we’ve ever taken.
And here’s the thing: those panels aren’t just “cool art on a wall.” They’re a story. A marker. A little time capsule bolted to brick.
From Epperson Photo to Bedford Camera: A New Chapter on an Old Wall
Before it was Bedford, this place was known as Epperson Photo-Video—one of those names that sat in the local photo community like a familiar handshake. When Bedford Camera & Video (an Arkansas-based company) took over the store, they didn’t just change the sign and call it good. They started looking for ways to tie this building back into the heartbeat of Oklahoma City.
So, in anticipation of the anniversary of Bedford Camera taking over the store (Aug. 9), the team installed a new set of exterior murals celebrating modern Oklahoma icons. The panels were painted by local muralist Dr. Bob Palmer, and the full project included eight separate panels. The imagery includes recognizable OKC symbols like the Crystal Bridge, Devon Tower, the Survivor Tree, and the SkyDance Bridge.
We love this part: Bedford Camera’s general manager Eric Williams also shared that three additional panels were intended for community use—contests, photo-of-the-month features, and rotating messages—so the wall could keep evolving with the people who walk in and out of that store.
That’s not just decoration. That’s a handshake back to the community.
About the Artist: Dr. Bob Palmer
If you’ve road-tripped across Oklahoma and paid attention to the sides of buildings, there’s a good chance you’ve already “met” Dr. Bob Palmer—you just didn’t realize it at the time.
Throughout his career, Bob and his team have painted more than 3,800 murals across Oklahoma, around the United States, and even internationally. His work shows up on grain elevators, downtown alleys, schools, gyms, small-town main streets, and big-city corners. If there’s a blank wall and a story to tell, odds are good Palmer Studios has been there with brushes in hand.
On his Murals by Palmer site, he sums it up perfectly: through the art of murals, we’re able to touch the heart and memories of our historic past and pass that heritage on in visual form to our children and community.
That’s exactly what’s happening on the side of Bedford’s building. These aren’t random graphics slapped onto a façade. They’re part of a much bigger legacy of using public art to honor local history, identity, and memory. The same hands that painted courthouse walls and small-town heritage scenes across Oklahoma also left their mark here on a camera store along a former Route 66 alignment.
For us at Forgotten Main Street, that matters. It connects Bedford Camera’s wall to a statewide tapestry of murals that are quietly doing the work of preserving stories—one painted panel at a time.
The Route 66 Connection
One of the panels hits us right in the soft spot: the Route 66 shield.
Because Oklahoma City isn’t just “near Route 66.” OKC is part of Route 66’s backbone—one of the places where the Mother Road wasn’t just a highway, but a lifeline.
When Route 66 came to life in 1926, it stitched the country together from Chicago to Los Angeles. Oklahoma didn’t just get a taste of it—we got a big slice. Oklahoma has more drivable miles of the original, old Mother Road than any other state, which means a huge stretch of that history is still under our tires today. Those miles poured travelers into OKC: families searching for the next opportunity, salesmen and servicemen, vacation caravans, and everyday folks just trying to get somewhere better than where they’d been.
What Route 66 meant in this part of OKC
Route 66 brought the kinds of places we chase in Forgotten Main Street:
- Motor courts and neon motels that promised “vacancy” and a hot shower
- Diners where coffee refills came with a side of small talk
- Service stations and garages that kept the journey alive
- Hand-painted signs that were basically roadside poetry
Then the interstates came. The traffic shifted. And just like that, whole stretches of the old highway economy got bypassed. Some businesses adapted. Some didn’t. And a lot of what’s left now is what we love most: the evidence. The artifacts. The beautiful leftovers.
So seeing Route 66 worked into a modern mural set is a reminder that OKC’s “new skyline” and its “old road” history are part of the same story. It never stopped being Route 66 country. The scenery just changed.
Why Murals Matter
Murals are one of the most honest forms of public history we’ve got—because they don’t hide behind a ticket counter. They live outside in the real world, where weather and time do what they do, and where regular folks can stumble into them on an ordinary day.
A good mural does a few important things:
- It anchors a place to its identity
- It tells a story without making you read a plaque
- It becomes a shared memory for the whole town
- It turns an everyday wall into a landmark
Murals like these—featuring the Crystal Bridge, Devon Tower, the Survivor Tree, the SkyDance Bridge, and Route 66—become a quick visual map of what Oklahoma City values and remembers. And because this project was created by an artist whose entire career has been about capturing history on walls, it fits right into a bigger narrative: Oklahoma using art to remember itself.
Preserving the Glimpses
Here’s the part we’ll always preach from the passenger seat:
History doesn’t just live in museums. It lives in the stuff we can still see.
A mural.
A ghost sign.
A brick wall that’s watched fifty summers.
A Route 66 shield painted like a badge of honor.
These things become the breadcrumbs for the next generation—proof that the past was real, and that it mattered enough to keep.
And here’s the wild truth: even “modern icons” become history way faster than anyone expects. Today’s Devon Tower is tomorrow’s “remember when.” Today’s SkyDance Bridge becomes the postcard your kids find in a box twenty years from now.
The moment you paint it, you’re preserving it.
Next Time You’re at Bedford Camera…
Do us a favor: don’t just run in, grab gear, and bounce.
Walk the mural panels like a mini gallery. Look at the details. Find the Route 66 nod. Let it sink in that photography—what we all love—has always been about holding onto moments before time tries to erase them.
And if you’re the kind of person who keeps a camera in the car (same), these panels are an easy personal project: wide shots, tight crops, textures, edge light at golden hour, rainy-day drama, night shots with reflections… the wall changes every time the sky does.
Because sometimes the “forgotten” part of Forgotten Main Street isn’t three hours down a dirt road.
Sometimes it’s right there on a brick wall in OKC… just waiting for us to stop and actually see it.
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