Lavonia GA - Old Drive-In Theater

25th April 2009

Back to April 2004 and we are driving through Lavonia, a small town of around 1800 people in Franklin County, Georgia and spotted the remains of this old drive-in theater. Clearly it had been closed for some time and had more recently been used as an 'affordable mobile home' trading lot; this in turn had also gone out of business!

Despite many visits to the USA I had never seen an outdoor drive-in theater before so out of curiosity we stopped and took a quick look. Drive-in theaters were very popular in the late 50's and early 60's and there were something like 4000 spread across the USA. This would have been called a Hi-Way or a Starlite perhaps.

The drive-in was killed off by colour tv, the VCR, video rental, daylight saving hours and bad weather as well as the increasing value of the land they occupied. Very few of these are operating today and those that do are more nostalgic novelties than profit-making businesses.

Starting with the view from the road, the back of the theater screen clearly had made an eye-catching advertising hoarding. The office beneath would probably have been the ticket office and perhaps concession stand (snack bar) which would have sold hot dogs, pizza, french fries and coke. This was what made the theater profitable. 1024x768	This photo was taken from the opposite side and shows the remains of the theater screen. It looks as if the screen used to be wider than it is now. The landscaping in the foreground was probably added after the theater closed. 1024x762	As this was directly opposite the screen I think it was the projection room. Sadly no interesting remains were left inside. 1024x761	Can't resist this, the remains of the trailer home business... 1024x768