As the ad above indicated, Roy Cheverton was one of the owners of the new Sunset. (His wife ran the snack bar.) In a political ad in the May 31, 1960 Humboldt Standard, Geo R. Cheverton wrote, “With the help of Ted and Vada Jennings and Mrs. Nelson, we built the Sunset Drive-In Theatre at Myers Flat. They have since purchased our interest”
The Jan. 16, 1965 issue of the Standard ran a lengthy tour of flood damage along the Eel River, which encircles the town. “The Morrison-Jackson lumber mill is deep in silt. To the west, a beautiful new house lies under a leaning torrent of trees, sticks, and somebody else’s household. The Sunset drive-in theatre has set in a muddy Pacific.”
The Sunset opened on June 22, 1957, per an ad in the Humboldt Standard of Eureka CA the day before.
An article above the ad noted that the screen was 40x80 feet, made of half-inch marine plywood, and erected on a welded steel framework. It held 250 cars on five acres “furnished by Mrs. Mattie Myers Nelson,” and its concession / projection building included a room with indoor seating.
We know that there wasn’t a 1970s drive-in at 3848 McHenry Avenue, because a 1967 aerial photo showed that a big-box store was already there. (Though it wasn’t a Walmart yet, since the company hadn’t expanded into California yet.)
There is a drive-in west of the intersection of then-Briggsmore Avenue and Prescott Road (now about 2200 Plaza Pkwy) that was a single screen in 1967 but a three-screen drive-in in 1982. Looking all along Briggsmore Avenue in that 1967 aerial, I can’t find any others. Could I have another hint?
Although the Valley was advertising and showing movies weeks earlier, it held its formal Grand Opening on Thursday, June 25, 1953. The program that night was “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” plus free candy for the children, flowers for the ladies, and cigarettes for the men.
An aerial photo from 1955 shows a completed drive-in on US 51 about a mile and a half south of Canton, so perhaps the Starlite’s May 2, 1957 program of “Attack” and “Star of India” was just the season opener?
The site was still outlined in a 1975 topo map, but it was completely gone in a 1982 aerial photo. (That didn’t stop a 1987 topo map from continuing to include its outline, which shows that you can only trust topo maps so far.)
That 1982 aerial looks like some business chopped off the north half of the drive-in’s viewing field, and the topo map from the same year shows pretty much the same thing. The booth is near the northern edge of the drive-in. Weird-looking!
An Associated Press story, run on the front page of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph on May 8, 1967, included in a tornado roundup: “Seven homes were destroyed Saturday night [May 6] at Clay, Ky., by high winds that hit a corner of the community. Trees were felled and a drive-in theater screen was toppled as an audience watched. There were no serious injuries.”
Might as well use the Dinah Christian Center address: 7777 US-491, Shiprock, NM 87420, even though we know the Chief was on the other side of the street. That way at least the pointer will be close on CT’s map.
The Autorium was called that from the time it opened, based on stories and ads in the Salt Lake Tribune.
Also, it moved. Aerials from 1950 and 1958 showed a drive-in at 345 W. 21st South, but the 1962 photo showed buildings there in its place. The Autorium’s 1955 ads still said “2nd West & 21st South,” but its 1956 ads included the address of “2546 South 2nd West,” the current 2600 S 300 W. (SLC’s street names confuse me, but I digress.) Aerials showed a drive-in at that location intact through at least 1965 but gone by 1971.
The Autorium was still advertising in the Tribune in September 1964, though I couldn’t find any ads for it in 1965.
The story checks out. As I wrote here a few years ago, in a sidebar for a Salt Lake Tribune story (here’s a rot-proof Internet Archive link to it), photographer J.R. Eyerman’s daughter Kathryn Marshall said that her dad used “… And God Created Woman” to lure a full house for the photo.
Sure enough, in mid-August 1958, the Oak Hills showed that Bardot movie (“NOT Recommended for Children!”) and didn’t get around to “The Ten Commandments” until a few weeks later. So now we know where and when that iconic photo was taken.
Denver Post, May 22, 1949: “Heralded as a new and novel medium of presenting an all-western first run screen program, the Roundup theater on Curtis street, formerly known as the Plaza, re-opened Friday (May 20) and judging from the enthusiasm displayed by movie fans it is evident the Wolfberg theater’s new policy will meet with hearty approval.”
As many drive-ins did in the 1950s, the Vegas filed a federal anti-monopoly lawsuit because it couldn’t get first-run movies. That was reported in the Denver Post on Nov. 23, 1958, when the drive-in was owned by Las Vegas man Gus Daskalos and Green River WY’s Steve Nitse.
George R. Armstrong of Cortez, deputy district attorney in the 6th judicial district for Montezuma and Dolores counties, still owned the Chief on June 18, 1957, when his name hit the Denver Post because of the way he settled an apparently unrelated tax issue.
More evidence that the Palms opened: An ad in the July 27, 1952 Denver Post for the re-release of King Kong said that it would be playing at the Palms in Truth or Consequences on Aug. 22.
Same drive-in? Denver Post, June 16, 1952: “Near O'Neill, Neb., Sunday night (June 15), a freak twister destroyed a drive-in theater at an estimated loss of $8,000. The structure had been completed only two weeks ago.”
Thanks to HistoricAerials.com’s easy-to-use tools, we know that the East’s ramps persisted on the south side of Colfax through a 2011 aerial photo, but became a surface parking lot by 2013. The lot it became appears perfectly rectangular in my eyes, both in overall shape and in its rows of parking spaces. The fan-shaped lot is much closer to the hospital, on the other side of Colfax.
Let me look at my Cortez Sentinel scans again. On Aug. 5, 1950, a cable snapped as workers were lifting the wooden screen tower into place, with the tower’s fall “splintering” the pre-fab structure. Local theater manager Owen Maxey couldn’t predict how long the opening would be delayed. A few more notes from the Sentinel article a few days later are that it correctly spelled the Arroyo, which was being built by John Survant, who owned the Cortez indoor theatres, and it was “at the junction of the Lebanon road and highway 160” on the north_west_ side of town. (Oops, my mistake earlier.)
A grand-opening front-page story two weeks later misspelled the name “Arroya,” as did a huge ad within, inaccurately promising to show the movie “Albuquerque” that night. The following week included a smaller ad apologizing for that delay and getting the grand opening date right this time. Two weeks after opening, the ad spelling was finally corrected to “Arroyo”.
When I look at Google Street View of the former site on Lebanon Road just north of then-US 160, now-US 491, the steep hills on the other side of the highway look a little like an arroyo created by the highway department instead of by a fast-moving stream. If I squint.
Years later, under different ownership, it happened again. On Feb. 17, 1955, the Eagle Valley Enterprise ran a huge, far-ranging supplement called “Colorado Plateau – Fabulous Treasure House of Energy,” which included pages on communities all over western Colorado. In the Cortez section, Terenzio Gai had a display ad touting the T. Gai Warehouse in Yellow Jacket and the Gai Theaters in Cortez, which included the Anle and the “Arroya Drive-In”. If I hadn’t seen a photo of its old sign, I’d really start to wonder how they spelled their name.
I was just a little surprised that no one here has yet asked about this drive-in’s original name, the 47. It was chosen by owner James Petersen after a contest in the Douglas County News attracted 329 submissions. Rather than a highway number, which doesn’t match anything around Castle Rock, 47 (no #) “embodies the Douglas county automobile license number,” and Petersen thought that it would show he wanted to attract patrons from the whole county.
To get pedantic about every name change, a two-sentence note in the June 8, 1967 News said “Old "47” Drive-In to be known under new name “C. R. Drive-In”. Grand reopening Friday, June 9th.“ An end-of-season wrap-up article called it "the Castle Rock 47 Drive-In Theater”.
Boxoffice, June 30, 1969: “The 47 Drive-In has been leased by Richard Pedersen, Bob Olds and Bill Pence. Its name has been changed to the Castle Rock Cinema. … Pedersen, who will manage the airer, has a film industry background that includes New York and the midwest. Olds and Pence also own the Flick Theatre in Colorado Springs.”
Boxoffice, June 22, 1970: “The Castle Rock Cinema opened Thursday, May 28, for the 1970 season under the management of Eugene S. Ptak. All employees are local people and look forward to serving the moviegoing public, Ptak said. Castle Rock Cinema is operated by The Flick, the same company which managed it last season. The Flick operates a theatre in Colorado Springs and is building two theatres in Denver.”
The Douglas County News reported on July 26, 1956 that the tentative opening for Jim Petersen’s 47 was Wed., Aug. 9. “Giant screen will be erected and put in place by the end of next week according to present schedule,” said the note.
The 47 actually opened on Sunday, Aug. 12, 1956, based on a two-page ad in the previous Thursday’s News. The opening program was Martin & Lewis in “Artists and Models,” plus selected shorts and “always a color cartoon.” The drive-in ran a special ad the following week thanking the community for its warm reception.
As the ad above indicated, Roy Cheverton was one of the owners of the new Sunset. (His wife ran the snack bar.) In a political ad in the May 31, 1960 Humboldt Standard, Geo R. Cheverton wrote, “With the help of Ted and Vada Jennings and Mrs. Nelson, we built the Sunset Drive-In Theatre at Myers Flat. They have since purchased our interest”
The Jan. 16, 1965 issue of the Standard ran a lengthy tour of flood damage along the Eel River, which encircles the town. “The Morrison-Jackson lumber mill is deep in silt. To the west, a beautiful new house lies under a leaning torrent of trees, sticks, and somebody else’s household. The Sunset drive-in theatre has set in a muddy Pacific.”
The Sunset opened on June 22, 1957, per an ad in the Humboldt Standard of Eureka CA the day before.
An article above the ad noted that the screen was 40x80 feet, made of half-inch marine plywood, and erected on a welded steel framework. It held 250 cars on five acres “furnished by Mrs. Mattie Myers Nelson,” and its concession / projection building included a room with indoor seating.
We know that there wasn’t a 1970s drive-in at 3848 McHenry Avenue, because a 1967 aerial photo showed that a big-box store was already there. (Though it wasn’t a Walmart yet, since the company hadn’t expanded into California yet.)
There is a drive-in west of the intersection of then-Briggsmore Avenue and Prescott Road (now about 2200 Plaza Pkwy) that was a single screen in 1967 but a three-screen drive-in in 1982. Looking all along Briggsmore Avenue in that 1967 aerial, I can’t find any others. Could I have another hint?
Although the Valley was advertising and showing movies weeks earlier, it held its formal Grand Opening on Thursday, June 25, 1953. The program that night was “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” plus free candy for the children, flowers for the ladies, and cigarettes for the men.
An aerial photo from 1955 shows a completed drive-in on US 51 about a mile and a half south of Canton, so perhaps the Starlite’s May 2, 1957 program of “Attack” and “Star of India” was just the season opener?
The site was still outlined in a 1975 topo map, but it was completely gone in a 1982 aerial photo. (That didn’t stop a 1987 topo map from continuing to include its outline, which shows that you can only trust topo maps so far.)
That 1982 aerial looks like some business chopped off the north half of the drive-in’s viewing field, and the topo map from the same year shows pretty much the same thing. The booth is near the northern edge of the drive-in. Weird-looking!
An Associated Press story, run on the front page of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph on May 8, 1967, included in a tornado roundup: “Seven homes were destroyed Saturday night [May 6] at Clay, Ky., by high winds that hit a corner of the community. Trees were felled and a drive-in theater screen was toppled as an audience watched. There were no serious injuries.”
Might as well use the Dinah Christian Center address: 7777 US-491, Shiprock, NM 87420, even though we know the Chief was on the other side of the street. That way at least the pointer will be close on CT’s map.
The Autorium was called that from the time it opened, based on stories and ads in the Salt Lake Tribune.
Also, it moved. Aerials from 1950 and 1958 showed a drive-in at 345 W. 21st South, but the 1962 photo showed buildings there in its place. The Autorium’s 1955 ads still said “2nd West & 21st South,” but its 1956 ads included the address of “2546 South 2nd West,” the current 2600 S 300 W. (SLC’s street names confuse me, but I digress.) Aerials showed a drive-in at that location intact through at least 1965 but gone by 1971.
The Autorium was still advertising in the Tribune in September 1964, though I couldn’t find any ads for it in 1965.
The story checks out. As I wrote here a few years ago, in a sidebar for a Salt Lake Tribune story (here’s a rot-proof Internet Archive link to it), photographer J.R. Eyerman’s daughter Kathryn Marshall said that her dad used “… And God Created Woman” to lure a full house for the photo.
Sure enough, in mid-August 1958, the Oak Hills showed that Bardot movie (“NOT Recommended for Children!”) and didn’t get around to “The Ten Commandments” until a few weeks later. So now we know where and when that iconic photo was taken.
Denver Post, May 22, 1949: “Heralded as a new and novel medium of presenting an all-western first run screen program, the Roundup theater on Curtis street, formerly known as the Plaza, re-opened Friday (May 20) and judging from the enthusiasm displayed by movie fans it is evident the Wolfberg theater’s new policy will meet with hearty approval.”
As many drive-ins did in the 1950s, the Vegas filed a federal anti-monopoly lawsuit because it couldn’t get first-run movies. That was reported in the Denver Post on Nov. 23, 1958, when the drive-in was owned by Las Vegas man Gus Daskalos and Green River WY’s Steve Nitse.
George R. Armstrong of Cortez, deputy district attorney in the 6th judicial district for Montezuma and Dolores counties, still owned the Chief on June 18, 1957, when his name hit the Denver Post because of the way he settled an apparently unrelated tax issue.
More evidence that the Palms opened: An ad in the July 27, 1952 Denver Post for the re-release of King Kong said that it would be playing at the Palms in Truth or Consequences on Aug. 22.
Same drive-in? Denver Post, June 16, 1952: “Near O'Neill, Neb., Sunday night (June 15), a freak twister destroyed a drive-in theater at an estimated loss of $8,000. The structure had been completed only two weeks ago.”
Thanks to HistoricAerials.com’s easy-to-use tools, we know that the East’s ramps persisted on the south side of Colfax through a 2011 aerial photo, but became a surface parking lot by 2013. The lot it became appears perfectly rectangular in my eyes, both in overall shape and in its rows of parking spaces. The fan-shaped lot is much closer to the hospital, on the other side of Colfax.
Let me look at my Cortez Sentinel scans again. On Aug. 5, 1950, a cable snapped as workers were lifting the wooden screen tower into place, with the tower’s fall “splintering” the pre-fab structure. Local theater manager Owen Maxey couldn’t predict how long the opening would be delayed. A few more notes from the Sentinel article a few days later are that it correctly spelled the Arroyo, which was being built by John Survant, who owned the Cortez indoor theatres, and it was “at the junction of the Lebanon road and highway 160” on the north_west_ side of town. (Oops, my mistake earlier.)
A grand-opening front-page story two weeks later misspelled the name “Arroya,” as did a huge ad within, inaccurately promising to show the movie “Albuquerque” that night. The following week included a smaller ad apologizing for that delay and getting the grand opening date right this time. Two weeks after opening, the ad spelling was finally corrected to “Arroyo”.
When I look at Google Street View of the former site on Lebanon Road just north of then-US 160, now-US 491, the steep hills on the other side of the highway look a little like an arroyo created by the highway department instead of by a fast-moving stream. If I squint.
Years later, under different ownership, it happened again. On Feb. 17, 1955, the Eagle Valley Enterprise ran a huge, far-ranging supplement called “Colorado Plateau – Fabulous Treasure House of Energy,” which included pages on communities all over western Colorado. In the Cortez section, Terenzio Gai had a display ad touting the T. Gai Warehouse in Yellow Jacket and the Gai Theaters in Cortez, which included the Anle and the “Arroya Drive-In”. If I hadn’t seen a photo of its old sign, I’d really start to wonder how they spelled their name.
I was just a little surprised that no one here has yet asked about this drive-in’s original name, the 47. It was chosen by owner James Petersen after a contest in the Douglas County News attracted 329 submissions. Rather than a highway number, which doesn’t match anything around Castle Rock, 47 (no #) “embodies the Douglas county automobile license number,” and Petersen thought that it would show he wanted to attract patrons from the whole county.
To get pedantic about every name change, a two-sentence note in the June 8, 1967 News said “Old "47” Drive-In to be known under new name “C. R. Drive-In”. Grand reopening Friday, June 9th.“ An end-of-season wrap-up article called it "the Castle Rock 47 Drive-In Theater”.
Boxoffice, June 30, 1969: “The 47 Drive-In has been leased by Richard Pedersen, Bob Olds and Bill Pence. Its name has been changed to the Castle Rock Cinema. … Pedersen, who will manage the airer, has a film industry background that includes New York and the midwest. Olds and Pence also own the Flick Theatre in Colorado Springs.”
Boxoffice, June 22, 1970: “The Castle Rock Cinema opened Thursday, May 28, for the 1970 season under the management of Eugene S. Ptak. All employees are local people and look forward to serving the moviegoing public, Ptak said. Castle Rock Cinema is operated by The Flick, the same company which managed it last season. The Flick operates a theatre in Colorado Springs and is building two theatres in Denver.”
The Douglas County News reported on July 26, 1956 that the tentative opening for Jim Petersen’s 47 was Wed., Aug. 9. “Giant screen will be erected and put in place by the end of next week according to present schedule,” said the note.
The 47 actually opened on Sunday, Aug. 12, 1956, based on a two-page ad in the previous Thursday’s News. The opening program was Martin & Lewis in “Artists and Models,” plus selected shorts and “always a color cartoon.” The drive-in ran a special ad the following week thanking the community for its warm reception.
I found this 1922 photo by Charles M. Smyth at the Denver Public Library web site.
I found this photo, by the Rocky Mountain Photo Company, at the Denver Public Library web site.
I found this 1968 photo, from Benjamin Draper’s doctoral dissertation on Colorado Theaters, at the Denver Public Library web site.
This gorgeous photo was taken Sept. 6, 1929 by the Rocky Mountain Photo Company, according to information on the Denver Public Library web site.