Rancho Drive-In
Federal Boulevard,
San Diego,
CA
92105
Federal Boulevard,
San Diego,
CA
92105
No one has favorited this theater yet
Located on the SE corner of Federal Boulevard and Euclid Avenue. Opened in January 1948, smart Art Moderne styling defined San Diego’s Rancho Drive-In. A giagantic screen-tower was backed by an epic Western motif mural befitting this 1940’s futuristic outdoor cinema. Graceful palms lined seven lanes of entrance drive where white uniformed lot boys stood ready to assist ticket buyers.
Once patrons found just the right dock to park their automobile they could trigger a switch on the speaker post to call a car hop to come and take concession snack orders. Glider swings stood available in front of the oversized silver screen for those who chose not to remain inside a cramped car.
Everything was up to date at the Rancho Drive-In, and ticket sales were brisk. Problem was, it didn’t take too many years before real estate which the theatre occupied to become more valuable than an outdoor theatre could support. The end came rather quietly, no fanfare.
Look below to see quality shots of the Rancho from the LIFE photograph collection
Contributed by
Jeff Chapman
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
Recent comments (view all 12 comments)
Apparently the Life photos are of the Rancho in San Diego. The San Diego Weekly Reader has this web page about the area’s drive-ins, and the Life photos of the Rancho are among the illustrations. There’s considerable information about the Rancho there, too.
More photos appear in the April 24, 1948, issue of Boxoffice. It’s unmistakably the San Diego Rancho that Life mistakenly places in San Francisco.
I can’t find the Rancho in San Diego listed at Cinema Treasures yet, so the location for this page could just be corrected to San Diego. The only address I can find for it is Federal Boulevard at Euclid, San Diego, 92105. That would be just about 5100 Federal. Google satellite views show that the land has all been developed for other uses, so the Rancho Drive-In has been demolished.
Just weighing-in with a little observation here: I have never heard of a Rancho (or El Rancho) drive-in in San Francisco. This is not to say there may not have been one. Jack Tillmany’s Theatres of San Francisco makes no mention of it. More than this, though—the photos show a terrain that is just too flat behind the screen for anywhere within San Francisco. Also, the design of screen tower architectural embellishment is of a style and elaborateness I have never seen in the Bay Area—thinking back to drive-ins I either saw or viewed photos of. There was an EL Rancho in San Jose, but its screen tower had a cowboy on horseback, let alone the EL in the name. The Rancho in question looks like a type that would have been built in Southern California and areas throughout the Southwest.
This listing is most likely a duplicate of the El Rancho in South San Francisco. If the Life Magazine photos above show the Rancho Drive-In in San Diego, I would just change this listing to San Diego otherwise it could end up being deleted as a duplicate listing. I don’t know the exact address for the Rancho in San Diego, but the location given is Federal Boulevard.
The Life Magazine photos are definitely of the Rancho Drive-In in San Diego. The screen tower and its mural are easily recognizable in both the 1948 Boxoffice Magazine photos and the photos on the San Diego Weekly Reader web page. I don’t know how the editors of Life managed to displace the theater more than five hundred miles from its actual location.
I just noticed that the link I posted to the San Diego Weekly Reader web page at 8:46pm last night no longer works. I suggest a Google search on “San Diego Rancho Drive-In” (but without the quotation marks) to find it (it’s the first result.) It’s way easier than trying to use the Reader’s internal search function.
Here is the link for the San Diego Weekly Reader web page. According to that page, the Rancho in San Diego opened on January 28, 1948. The introduction above shouldn’t need too many alterations to convert this listing to the Rancho in San Diego.
At the corner of Euclid and Federal there is the nearly vacant Metropolitan Shopping Center. I would bet that that’s the former location of the Rancho Drive-In. Either that or the grounds of Cox Communications across the street.
From 1948 a photo that captured a partial view of the Rancho Drive In marquee along with a man standing underneath.
Here’s Federal Blvd and Euclid intersection circa 1964. A large drive in appears at the SE corner of the intersection.
http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=11933
Thanks S.S. looks like it.