Closed Theaters

In addition to highlighting West Virginia’s operating historic theaters, the West Virginia Historic Theatre Trail also remembers former Trail members that have closed (or have become adaptively reused as something other than a movie/performance venue). Since the Trail began in 2010, closures and/or reuses have included:

  • Grafton Drive-In (Grafton, Taylor County). Opened in 1949. Closed after the 2012 season; screen and marquee removed.
  • Jungle Drive-In (Parkersburg, Wood County). Opened in 1953. Closed after the 2012 season; still intact as of 2018.
  • Mt. Zion Drive-In (Mount Zion, Calhoun County). Closed.
  • WVSU Capitol Center (Charleston, Kanawha County). Now adaptively reused.

Why are so many drive-in theaters in West Virginia (and across the country) going out of business? A May 2016 article in the State Journal, “Lights Out: Technology Relegating Many Drive-in Theaters to Memory Lane,” explains the situation.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s