About this property
66 Drive-In is a historic drive-in theater national historic district located on U.S. Route 66 in Jasper County, Missouri near Carthage. The theater opened on September 22, 1949, four years before the first local television stations signed on in the Joplin-Springfield area. In an era before widespread adoption of transistors and before the invention of integrated circuits, car radios were not standard equipment in all vehicles. The few radios installed in vehicles were of vacuum tube design and power-hungry by modern standards. A series of poles in the car park of the nine-acre site were therefore deployed to hold loudspeakers so that viewers could hear the movie. When television became a rival to cinema in the 1950s, movie studios went to widescreen format to differentiate their product from broadcast TV; the drive-in's screen was widened sometime after 1953 to accommodate the change in format. A playground was added on-site during the baby boom era. The cinema was closed in 1985, but was renovated and reopened in 1998. It now shows two movies Friday, Saturday, Sunday every week. The speakers are now gone, although the poles which once supported them remain. A drive-in movie venue with many strong similarities to the original 66 Drive-In design (such as the original 4:3 screen aspect ratio, pole-mounted speakers and neon signage on the marquée) appears during the epilogue of Pixar's 2006 film Cars. The fictional drive-in is depicted as screening parody versions of other Pixar feature films.
Location
Categories
Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Everything a full report reveals about 66 Drive-In
This page lists 66 Drive-In. A full Aubrey report for an address near it pulls together this listing alongside battlefield records, land patents, and every other historical record within a chosen radius:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Questions about this property
When was 66 Drive-In listed on the National Register?
66 Drive-In was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 1, 2003.
What type of historic resource is 66 Drive-In?
66 Drive-In is classified as a district in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for 66 Drive-In?
The period of significance for 66 Drive-In is recorded as the civil_war era.
Can I research the history near 66 Drive-In?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near 66 Drive-In will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
More in Jasper County
Historic places, battles, and census history across Jasper County.
Explore JasperCounty ›More historic places in Missouri
Browse all historic places in Missouri.
View Missourihistoric sites ›Research the history near this site
An Aubrey US report for an address near 66 Drive-In will include this listing alongside battlefield records and other historical sources within your chosen radius.