Research
a drive-in theater.
I owe much of the inspiration of this site to Wesley Horton, who had the first drive-in history research site I had ever seen. His page encouraged me to check those back issues of the newspaper on microfilm. I was as surprised as anyone when I actually tracked down opening night information on the El-Rancho.
Since then, I have used other research tools besides newspapers. Foremost is the Geological Survey Map, a detailed topographic map printed by the United States Government. The scale on most USGS maps is great enough to show the locations of drive-ins and some detail such as fence lines, ticket booths, screens and snack bars. It was thanks to finding drive-ins on Geological Survey maps that I knew I wasn't imagining things when I thought I remembered certain theaters from freeway rides late at night.
Most libraries have extensive Geologial Survey maps of your state, while university libraries and larger regional libraries should have all the Geological Survey maps for the country. If you are lucky, you live near an underfunded library that hasn't replaced their old maps with new copies, and you can more easily find sites of drive-ins that are gone and have been deleted from later editions. Drive-ins are labeled prominently as the huge contribution to our landscape that they are.
The Duwamish Drive-in. Note the fence line is sometimes black, and sometimes purple. In color map reproductions, you can tell something of the history of the theater or its neighborhood by the new additions when you compare colors with the dates of the map. The black lines represent the first date of the map, in this case 1949, so part of the theater was in place in that year. The north side of the theater and the screen and projection booth are purple, indicating alterations that happened after 1949 but before the photo-revision date of 1973. I found an earlier edition of the map, and it does indeed show that the fence used to extend further out toward the street intersection.
In Janurary 2000, Microsoft Terraserver started including topogrphic maps with their satellite imagery, and some of these maps are old enough to show closed drive-ins, though, as with the photos themselves, you really have to get to a close scale and hunt around. To get a bigger picture of topographic maps, use topozone.com.
City-Scenes may also be useful.
Large libraries may also have land ownership maps, and some of these atlases are so detailed that they show the row humps of a drive-in. Luckily for me, the Seattle Public Library has not replaced their old, large-scale Kroll Atlases, though they did cover up the Bel-Kirk Drive-in with information for the replacement property. Unfortunately, the books have stern warnings about photocopying them, and they are so old they might be damaged if someone tries to mount them on a copier. They are still good enough for answering basic layout questions while you read them at the library.
Information from a Kroll Map was used in the making of this map, which is different. This map is provided for informational purposes only.
At the other scale extreme are Sectional Aeronautical Charts for visual navigation by airplane pilots. I found a map of the whole Puget Sound area, and all the drive-ins still around when the map was made were represented by fan symbols. If you don't know the location of old drive-ins in a region, this would be a great tool for finding theaters at a glance, if you can find an old edition of a map. The map contains explicit instructions for the user to DISTROY it when the new editions come out, so that pilots won't be in danger of following old information. Since drive-ins are such a distinctive feature in aeronautical navigation, that's all the more reason to preserve them from destruction.
See Cook Studio's mention of the drive-in aeronautical symbol.
Update: Current versions of these maps can be found at Maptech MapServer, but not older editions
State Departments of Transportation have extensive photos of and around state highways. Washington State, for instance, has been filming every few feet of its highways at ground level since 1948, and they do even more photography when they improve a road. Anyone with access to these archives would have a gold mine of exteriors and marquees, if only you could convince the holder of the archive that you were doing serious research. So far I have only gotten aerial views. I sent an e-mail to the address in the above link, and was told to fax them maps of the locations of aerial photos I wanted. Contact prints are cheaper than enlargements, but the scale varies widely on contact prints They charged ten dollars per photo, which are nine inches square.
WSDOT Biennial Reports, 1908-1968: another source of photos from our favorite state agency
Washington State Department of Transportation, June 1, 1970
Drive-ins orginally had to be designed, and the designs had to be submitted to local government offices and kept on file there, at the contractor's and perhaps at the head offices of the theater chain. Somehow, some of these plans would have to have survived the years, but where? And how does one see these plans? Ken Layton said that some architects and developers have plans on file, if you can find the current owner of them, and you can fork over $100 for a new set of blueprints.
High school and possibly college yearbooks may be another good source of photos, as the drive-in was once the local hangout for students.
One more avenue you can try is to ask for information about a specific drive-in from local historical societies, of which each suburb seems to have one. Unfortuneately, drive-ins were mostly located between the developed centers of suburbs, and thus are not strongly covered by any one historical society or the other.
Andy Hilbert's How To Research a Drive-in Page
Tim Reed's Researching Drive-ins Page
Evans Criswell's Compiling Historical Data About Theatres. Detailed tips on newspaper research.
Travis H. Beaver's How to Research a Drive-In Theater
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