Epsom Drive-In

9716 Jensen Drive,
Houston, TX 77093

400 cars

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rivest266
rivest266 on June 6, 2024 at 11:39 am

The first ad for the Epsom appeared in the Chronicle on November 27th, 1945. Posted.

MichaelKilgore
MichaelKilgore on June 6, 2024 at 9:16 am

A 1987 letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle claimed the Epsom was built on the site of a former, possibly illegal horse or dog race track.

The earliest mention I could find for the Epsom was a humble 1-inch ad in the Nov. 29, 1945 issue of the Chronicle; it said nothing about any grand opening. The last ad I could find was from March 14, 1962. But that may have been when the Epsom switched to Spanish-language films, which may not have been advertised in the Chronicle.

A legal notice on April 16, 1964 from the IRS said it had seized lots of the Epsom’s equipment from W. V. Ratcliff due to tax delinquency.

An article in the April 28, 1975 issue of Boxoffice said that Spanish-language theaters such as the Epsom were seeing a surge of business, quoting from a Denver Post article. Ray Hugger owned three of them, including the Epsom Drive-In.