Guthrie’s Beacon Drive-In will not reopen

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What a crummy way to start the new year. The Beacon Drive-In Theatre in Guthrie OK has shown its final movies. According to the Guthrie News Page, the drive-in was sold a few days ago and will be replaced by a credit union building.

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.

New Year’s Resolution: News

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Happy New Year, everybody! I just wanted to let everyone know that my goal for 2026 is to post drive-in news about as soon as I get it. To make my work easier, I’m going to forgo photos and other graphics unless I really get inspired. I’ll link to the sources; you can usually find pictures there.

I’m also embarassed to say that I’ve got a huge pile of news that piled up last year. I plan to work backwards through the pile, posting the news with the date that I received it. That way, anyone searching for old news about a particular place ought to be able to find it. And here we go…

Wind smashes old building at 99W

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According to Oregon Live, a wind storm last week knocked down part of a building at Newburg OR’s 99W Drive-in. The good news, if you can call it that, is that the building was an indoor theater that had been closed for 10 years.

The drive-in launched a GoFundMe page with the hope of raising money to demolish and clean up the damaged structure, which is connected to the drive-in’s concession stand. As of the article’s publication, it had raised about $3600.