Oak Hills Drive-In - Living History
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Salt Lake County, Utah, archives record the "Oak Hills Drive-In" was built in 1951 at 2775 East 1000 South in Salt Lake City (above the mouth of the Mormons famous Emigration Canyon and just southeast of the still-in-business Hogle Zoo).
In 1958 my parents broke ground on our new home in Oak Hills, about 100 feet south of the perimeter fence surrounding the Oak Hills Drive-In. To accommodate such close residential proximity, the drive-in's owners allowed monaural speaker connection to any homeowner willing to shell out the $50 installation fee, such as my parent's, Jack & Fern Douglas. The result? Free movies with sound from the comfort of our balcony or out our home's north windows!
Oak Hills Drive-In played all the Disney classics ("Pollyanna", "Big Red", etc.), super-spy Sean Connery/James Bond adventures ("From Russia With Love", "Goldfinger", etc.), and war movies like "Von Ryan's Express".
This drive-in has sometimes been misidentified as the one appearing in an old Life Magazine-published photo showing viewers in parked cars watching Charlton Heston as "Moses" in the movie "Ten Commandments".
Ultimately, urban development crowded out most of the nostalgic drive-in locations, making the ground under them worth more than the revenue generated by them. By the mid-1960s, the Oak Hills Drive-In was demolished for housing that eventually wiped out all trace of its existence.
Oak Hills Drive-In, UT 84108
Movie showtimes, pictures, history and much more information about Oak Hills Drive-In in UT 84108
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