Category Archives: Colorado

Feb. 23: Tru Vu Drive In Theatre, Delta CO

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It’s Day 54 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. As I drove for five hours over snowy, often mountainous roads from one closed-for-the season drive-in to another, I really wished I had a better way of finding more open, warm-weather places to visit in February. As least I made it in one piece back to Colorado and the Tru Vu Drive In Theatre in Delta.

The Tru Vu opened in 1954 and has been rolling along ever since. For the first half of its life (so far), the Tru Vu shared Delta with the Skylite Drive-In which had opened almost literally across the street in 1949. By 1984, the Skylite had been renamed the Big Sky, and it closed soon afterward.

A lot of drive-in theaters have some drama associated with them. They add screens, they lose screens. They shut down for a while, and sometimes reopen. Not the Tru Vu. Delta locals are just proud to have it around.

My first visit to the Tru Vu was on Memorial Day Weekend 1998. The other drive-ins in western Colorado were all showing Titanic, most as a single feature. The Tru Vu’s marquee reached out to me with the promise of something different, the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla. The drive-in complemented that movie very well, rewarding its broad action sequences and distracting viewers from its plot holes. Ah, memories of good times when it warm and dry. (Update: I drove past the Tru Vu for real on Memorial Day Weekend 2017. I’ve updated this post with the sharper photo I took.)

Miles Today / Total:  273 / 7049 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 37

Nearby Restaurant: Despite traveling for a month through the Southwest, I haven’t stopped at Mexican restaurants very often. I took a step toward fixing that at a little place called Fiesta Vallarta. The Super Burrito looked like enough to hold me all week, and the margaritas made me glad that I stayed somewhere within walking distance.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The Quality Inn is the closest place to the Tru Vu and about a half-mile walk from the Fiesta Vallarta. It’s a little tired, but it’s clean and very inexpensive. I had a mini fridge in the room, a hot breakfast in the morning, and an adjacent grocery store across the parking lot.

Only in Delta: Delta is home to The Egyptian Theatre, operated by the same folks who run the Tru Vu. The 750-seat Egyptian Revival movie house opened in 1928 at the height of the fashion for thematically-designed cinemas. It was one of the first theaters during the Great Depression to hold “Bank Night,” a promotion where a random patron won $30. This pilot program worked so well that by 1936 the promotion was in use at 4000 cinemas in the United States.

Next Stop: The Star Drive-In Theatre, Montrose CO.

Minturn CO embraces its new drive-in

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Just this past Sunday, the Denver Post ran a nice little article describing the arrival and first season of the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In in Minturn CO. That makes me wonder how long the editors sat on this story, since the Blue Starlite’s last Minturn movie of the season was over six weeks ago. Maybe they were stumped about how a theater in a mountain valley small town could still call itself “urban”.

The Post tells the story of Josh Frank, who started the Blue Starlite on a shoestring in a 20-car lot in Austin TX and has grown the business to several locations across the country. His funky, eclectic vision of drive-ins was a perfect match for Minturn, a 1000-resident village with the words “funky” and “eclectic” in its mission statement.

In Minturn, Frank’s Blue Starlite sets up in the 40-car parking lot at Little Beach Park, which the village lets him use for free. Most weekend shows have been sellouts. At 7860 feet, this Blue Starlite is touted as the highest drive-in in the country. “This has been my favorite place to do this in six years,” Frank said.

There’s much more, including another Blue Starlite photo scraped from its web site. So go read it!

Drive-ins used to be big in Durango

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Rocket Drive-In marquee

The Rocket as it appeared in May 1998.
Photo by Michael Kilgore from the Carload Flickr Pool

The Durango Herald ran a great story yesterday that outlined a thorough history of drive-in theaters in Durango CO. It starts with the Basin Drive-in on Main Avenue in 1950, which was apparently its first year. “If the drive-in was open before that, which appears unlikely, it wasn’t advertised in the Herald,” wrote columnist John Peel.

In 1956, the Basin was renamed the Knox. That’s the way it’s listed in my 1955-56 Theatre Catalog’s drive-in list, and that it was run by (and probably owned by) one T.R. Knox.

The Rocket opened in 1957 in the southeast part of town. A year later, the Knox became the Bell Drive-in; I wonder if some guy named Bell bought it. In 1963, ads for the Bell disappeared from the Herald, so I’m guessing it died after the 1962 season. Also in 1963, the Buckskin Drive-In opened near Ignacio, a few miles south of Durango by the Southern Ute Reservation. The article didn’t mention when the Buckskin closed, but there’s little sign of it now.

Inside Durango proper, the Rocket was the only drive-in in town from 1963 until it closed in 2004. It had a great location between US Highway 160 to its north and a scenic bluff at its south. I’m glad to have experienced it before it left us.

There are a lot more memories and a couple of nice photos in the Herald article, so you really should go read it!