Ace-Hi Drive-In
McConnelsville, Ohio
Shop Ace-Hi Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. Its sign was an ace of spades with ACE inside the spade, HI on a dark board beside it, and DRIVE IN running down a tall lattice column. Boxoffice reported in May 1960 that Frank Nolan and Frank X. Rauch had bought the 385-speaker theater and meant to play first-run pictures. Browse the styles below, and the full Ace-Hi history is further down. Down Home Apparel is an American small business remembering the best places and teams of yesteryear, and every shirt is printed to order in the USA.
4 products
Ace-Hi Drive-In History
The Ace-Hi Drive-In in McConnelsville, Ohio, opened in 1955 just north of town, between Ohio 60 and the Muskingum River. Its sign is the reason anyone remembers it: an ace of spades with ACE inside the spade, HI on a dark board beside it, and DRIVE IN running down a tall column in a lattice of lines. On the photo that survives, the marquee has no movie on it. It tells the town of McConnelsville, a long way from any ocean, that for real adventure it should join the Navy.
Boxoffice reported on May 2, 1960, that Frank Nolan and Frank X. Rauch had bought the 385-speaker theater from George and Charles Barkhurst and meant to play first-run pictures. An aerial from 1960 shows it intact and apparently running.
After that the record goes quiet. The drive-in is still marked on a 1977 topographic map, which shows only that the place was there, and by 1984 it had clearly been closed for some time. The land is now home to Zemar Transformer Company, with nothing of the theater left except perhaps the front of the entrance road.