Rocket Drive-In
2400 N. Main Street,
Las Cruces,
NM
88001
2400 N. Main Street,
Las Cruces,
NM
88001
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Based on its ads in the Las Cruces Sun-News, the Rocket opened on July 20, 1952. Its first movie was “Too Young to Kiss” with June Allyson and Van Johnson “plus news and cartoon”.
The building closest to the site of the Rocket’s screen tower is the bank at 2400 N Main St.
Motion Picture Herald, July 5, 1952: “U. A. Kane has opened his new 500-car Rocket drive-in at Las Cruces, N. M.”
Boxoffice, March 28, 1966: “U. A. Kane has closed and dismantled the Rocket Drive-In, Las Cruces, N.M., and will concentrate on the operation of the twin screen Fiesta Drive-In”
Boxoffice, Nov. 14, 1953: “Las Cruces, N.M. – U. A. Kane, owner of the Rocket Drive-In here, had a free quail dinner recently … Kane has an apartment under the screen tower and early one morning he heard a noise which sounded as if someone had hit the tower with several large rocks. Upon investigating Kane found eight dead quail. They had broken their necks by flying into the tower.”
U. A. Kane bought a display ad in the Oct. 23, 1954 issue of Boxoffice selling a miniature train “with two hundred miles on the speedometer”. The package included 750 feet of rail “like new”.
Boxoffice, Aug. 2, 1952: “LAS CRUCES, N. M. – The newly completed Rocket Drive-In recently opened on Highway 70 east of here. The airer is owned and operated by Hugh Kane.”
A closer address is 2603 N Main Street, Las Cruces, NM. This address lines up with the old entrance which is now the entrance to a shopping plaza.
The drive-in was gone by 1972 and nothing remains today. About the only indication that a drive-in was at that location is the fence behind Century 21 which runs in the same direction as the northern fence of the drive-in.
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