In Tulsa OK, on Sunday night, June 22, 1952, over 300 people attended a drive-in (theater? event?) on a lot next to the First Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Then as now, the church’s address is 900 S. New Haven Ave., less than a block north of the Mother Road. Admission was free, with donations accepted.

L. D. Arnold, head of the church’s men’s group, said the drive-in’s only purpose was “to advance the Gospel of Christ.” The lot was flat, without ramps, and sound was provided through “strategic” amplifiers around the area. Those speakers played music from the organ inside the church before each show. The first show was the travelogue, “America, the Beautiful,” and a religious film, “In His Name.”

The church advertised their drive-in on a weekly basis for the rest of the summer, concluding on Sept. 7 with “Witch-Bound America” and “The Sabbath.” Mr. Arnold said then that the drive-in would probably resume in the spring, but I can’t find any indication that it did. I reached out to the church through its email address for more details, but I haven’t seen a reply.

Should this count as a Route 66 drive-in? I’m back to the existential question of what constitutes a drive-in theater. It was a permanent location where patrons drove their cars to watch movies on a recurring basis. It has a short life, but I can’t think of a good reason not to include it on the Route 66 book’s page of additions. What do you think?

Virginia’s Fork Union Drive-In, which first opened in 1953 and closed in 2011, plans to hold another grand opening on April 10. That’s according to a video (not the one posted above) from WCAV, Charlottesville’s News Leader.

By the way, I fibbed just a little. Although it opened as the Fork Union Drive-In, its rebirth will be as The Drive-In at Fork Union. (Grr. It’s taking a lot of concentration to not type “Fort Union,” the drive-in on the cover of my best-selling Drive-Ins of New Mexico.)

The opening and closing dates are from an article last year in the Fluvanna Review about the work to restore the drive-in. That article tells the story of the orignal owners’ daughters working with a local team, headed by Ron Unnerstall, to bring back the drive-in even better than its glory days. I’m looking forward to adding the Fork Union to the list of active drive-ins in a couple of months.

I have so many reasons to love the Kanopolis. It’s a tiny drive-in in a tinier town, but its owners have spent a lot of effort and resources into making the place nice. And their Facebook page is currently my favorite drive-in page, not afraid to be quirky and fun. It’s nice to see that KWCH, Wichita’s News Leader, joined in with a report about the good news while including a video from last year that documented the original problem.

I searched for 4K laser projectors, and the ones I found look a lot less expensive than the huge digital projection that failed last year. But for the little Kanopolis, it’s probably an intelligent solution for getting going again. Congratulations!

The Sunset lot is so new it doesn’t really show up on Google Maps, and its location on Francisco Guerra Jr. Blvd. is so remote that there’s no decent Google Street View yet. But the drive-in has been showing movies at a steady pace. According to its web site, tonight’s double feature will be “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.” Tomorrow night brings two showings of “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

If you’re anywhere near Laredo, be sure to drop in and help support this great throwback to the drive-ins of old.

As reported by WFMZ, the Lehigh Valley’s News Leader, Shankweiler’s owner Matthew McClanahan was surprised to see the response on the drive-in’s Facebook page. As WFMZ’s video showed, a couple dozen shovelers, a snowblower, and a couple of pickup truck plows cleared the way for the show to go on.

Last week, something called DailyWise published a glowing tribute to one of my favorite drive-ins, the Fort Union Drive In Movie Theatre in Las Vegas NM. (Here’s the Internet Archive permalink version of that story, minus the photos, all from Google Maps.)

As I read the lengthy article, I started to notice that it was getting fuzzy, and not in good ways. It described the available snacks as “all the classics you crave, from buttery popcorn and candy to hot dogs and sodas” without mentioning its signature pizza. The admission price “is typically charged per car or per person” which didn’t really say anything. And I was sure something was wrong when the article described “the rows of speaker posts” for patrons. As you can see in my photo from 2023 (above) or a Google Street View from 2014, the Fort Union’s speaker poles haven’t been available for a very long time.

I asked Google about that publisher, and its AI told me, “Dailywise is an AI-powered app designed to improve personal productivity, health, and skill-building through habit tracking and coaching.” (Yes, I can see the irony here.) The Dailywise home page looks like AI-generated click bait.

So the result was a fake article about a very real place to visit. I highly recommend the Fort Union, which was also nice enough to let me use it on the cover of Drive-Ins of New Mexico. But I think I’ll skip future articles from Dailywise. I don’t think I can trust them.

The Sage Crest Drive-In in Yerington NV has been closed since 1995, but it still attracts attention. The dry desert has preserved so much of the place, including most of the panels from its original screen.

KTVN, Reno’s News Leader, visited the old Sage Crest site a week ago for its Nevada Backroads segment. This YouTube video is a great way to see how well the drive-in is holding up despite 30 years of inactivity. Check it out!

Here’s a video to tack on to the sad story of the closing of Guthrie, Oklahoma’s Beacon Drive-In for no good reason. That YouTube video, not the closing, is courtesy of KOKH, Oklahoma City’s News Leader.

Program note: Drive-in news was getting so slow in mid-January that I thought I could take a couple of weeks off. I was wrong. I’ll be catching up on the news for the rest of this week.

Folks who want to attend will need to sign up through Eventbrite, and the cost is free. Cars can start getting into place around 3:30 pm for the showing of “Grease.” The movie starts at 6:30, and cars won’t be allowed to leave until after 8. I hope someone points out the centennial to the organizers. Someone needs to set up a booth to sell copies of Drive-Ins of Route 66 there.

The Beacon was built in 1949 and opened on April 22, 1950. Its final program was at the end of 2024, and sales negotiations apparently continued all of last year. It makes me deeply sad when a perfectly good, historic drive-in closes like that. Let’s all hope for better days ahea.