Dover Drive-In
14550 E. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard,
Dover,
FL
33527
14550 E. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard,
Dover,
FL
33527
1 person
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previous Names: Plant City Drive-In
Nearby Theaters
The Plant City Drive-In was opened on January 24, 1950 with Bud Abbott & Lou Costello in “The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap”. It was located on the north side of Highway 574, or what was then Buffalo Avenue, between Plant City and the rural community of Dover. It was renamed Dover Drive-In in May 1960.
The theatre closed sometime in the 1970’s. Buffalo Avenue has since been renamed MLK Boulevard.
Contributed by
Andy
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Recent comments (view all 11 comments)
The Plant City Drive-in later changed for some reason to Dover Drive-in was owned by C.C. Blake and parked 300 cars.
Need an address, more info, and photos.
/theaters/33419/
The above address will map accurately to the location of the drive-in, which is vaguely visible on Google Earth using historic aerial imagery.
<a href=http://flic.kr/p/9cXMxA>Here is a 1957 aerial photo of the drive-in, courtesy of Earth Explorer and USGS.
Excellent find! The address can be updated to 14550 E. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Are you getting these pictures from a website or something? They’re amazing.
@Andy: Sorry about the messed up post above, I must be getting fatigued.
The aerial images are downloaded through <Earth Explorer, a USGS website. It is not as “user friendly” as Google Earth or HistoricAerials.com, but the site offers the capability to download aerial maps for the entire country from the 1940s and up, for virtually any sized community.
The selection of aerials available on Google Earth and HistoricAerials.com is extreamly limiting. If you have the location of the drive-in and know approximate what years it was open (or visible) you should be able to obtain the image you want.
The site is free, there is no cost to download. You will need to become a registered user, again no cost is involved. Just make sure to set the search parameters so that you request “aerial photo single frames” and set the number of searches to at least 100, the default setting is only 10.
Any other questions I can be emailed at:
Thanks. I’ve been playing around with the site since I left that comment. It’s just hard to get pictures that aren’t blurry when you zoom in.
14550 E Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Dover, FL 33527
The above address will map accurately to the location of the drive-in, which is vaguely visible on Google Earth using historic aerial imagery.
Here is a 1957 aerial photo of the drive-in, courtesy of Earth Explorer and USGS.
^ Correction to my sloppy post from earlier today.
The trick to Earth Explorer is to use images with the best resolution, a scale of 15000-30000 will produce acceptable results. The lower the scale, the higher the resolution. Even at a scale of 60000, a drive-in can be spotted fairly easily with a shape eye that knows where and what to look for.
Another issue is that when you download the photos, they are not “north” corrected automatically. You will need to rotate them with your imaging software so it is oriented north up.
Once the north is corrected, I zoom in to enlarge the drive-in, but not too much that I remove distinguishing features from the surroundings, which are necessary to match up the photo with more modern aerials, so I can obtain an exact current location.
If it wasn’t challenging, it wouldn’t be as fun!
Boxoffice, May 16, 1960: “Mark Keel, new owner of the Plant City Drive-In, located in Dover, has changed the outdoorer’s name to the more appropriate one of Dover Drive-In.”
Boxoffice, Sept. 30, 1950: “The Plant City Drive-In has been sold by Charles F. Hanson to Carl T. McKnight and Carl C. Blake, who own and operated the Reynolds Theatre in Youngstown, Ohio. Blake will manager the theatre. The new owners expect to make many improvements, including installation of in-a-car speakers. The car capacity at present is 300.”