The Faded Glory of America's Abandoned Drive-Ins

Drive-in theaters, like tail-finned cars and raccoon hats, recall a more carefree and innocent time in our country’s past. On the occasion of National Drive-In Movie Day (June 6), we pay tribute to those outdoor
palaces at which millions of families (and amorous couples) would park their cars and gaze at giant flickering screens.
The lights haven’t completely gone out on all our open-air theaters: there are 357 still-operating drive-ins in America (from a peak of 4,063 in 1958). But they are last remnants of an industry whose decline  like Ernest Hemingway's famous description of a bankruptcy  came gradually, then suddenly. Many more sit abandoned and neglected.
Who with a camera can resist the sad sight of our roofless movie palaces of yesteryear? Not Flickr users. We bring you 11 of their best abandoned drive-in findsREDLAND DRIVE-IN
Lufkin, Texas
Opened: unknown
Closed: unknown
Drive-ins represent a carefree time straight out of American Graffiti. Now, many of them just attract American graffiti. The long-defunct Redland, which ran adult movies in its final days, is a handsome reminder of a once-thriving business, with its remaining neon tubing seemingly just a flick of a switch away from beautifying the night sky again. A salvage yard now sits behind the so-called “screen tower” (on which the screen was mounted). And, yes, that’s a home, also abandoned, built onto the bottom of the tower. Note too, the extensions added on both sides of the tower to accommodate the various widescreen formats (like Cinemascope) that were popular in the 1950s.