Indian Drive-In
Texas Highway 214 and County Road 34,
Morton,
TX
79346
Texas Highway 214 and County Road 34,
Morton,
TX
79346
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In Morton TX, the Indian Drive-In debuted in the 1952-53 Motion Picture Almanac’s annual drive-in list with a capacity of 225 cars, owner W. B. Blankenship.
On April 29, 1953, the Lubbock Morning Avalanche reported, “At Morton, the screen of the Indian Drive-In theater was sheared off its concrete-frame mooring by winds estimated at over 50 mph”.
The screen must have been restored, because Morton’s Indian Drive-In was opened on August 21, 1954 with Dennis O-Keefe in “Drums of Tahiti”. It was included in a statewide newspaper advertisement for “It Came From Beneath the Sea” in July 1955.
The Indian Drive-In stayed in the MPA drive-in list through the 1962 edition, always with the same capacity and owner. It fell off in 1963.
A 1954 USGS aerial photo showed the drive-in four miles north of Morton on the southwest corner of County Road 34 & Texas Highway 214. By the time of a 1967 photo, that highway had been shifted slightly to the west, and nothing remained of the Indian Drive-In.
Contributed by
Michael Kilgore
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
Thumbing through old issues of the Morton Tribune, I saw an ad in the Aug. 12, 1954 edition saying that the Indian would open Saturday, Aug. 21. That would be very late in the year for a season opener, making me wonder whether the screen destruction in April 1953 was before the Indian opened for business. Anyway, that first movie in the following week’s ad was “Drums of Tahiti” with Dennis O'Keefe.
FYI, Morton High School’s sports teams were called the Indians.