Joshua Drive-In
Victorville, California1953-1982
Shop Joshua Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. The Joshua in Victorville, California, stood in the Mojave high desert near Route 66, and four boys aged 6 to 8 delayed its opening by wrecking the sound equipment stored in an old theater. Its sign carried the name in big letters with a tall J rising over the rest. Pick a style below, then read the full Joshua history 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.
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Joshua Drive-In History
The Joshua Drive-In in Victorville, California, opened on May 29, 1953, with Roar of the Crowd and Cow Country. Western Amusement Co. built it for about $75,000, with Frank Justice as manager, and it held about 400 cars. It stood in the Mojave high desert, close to Route 66.
Getting it open took a while. Western announced the theater in 1950 and started building in 1951. In August 1952, Boxoffice reported that four boys aged 6 to 8 had got into the old Victorville Theatre building, where the company had stored its hard-to-replace sound equipment, and wrecked enough of it to push back the opening. It was still not open that October, and it took until the next spring.
Its plain sign carried the name in big letters, with a tall J rising over the rest. It stayed open for almost 30 years. In December 1982 a new company, Entertainment Centers of America, took over the town's theaters, and it kept the Joshua going for about a week. The last night was December 29, 1982.
The screen came down in March 1989, and the local paper covered it under the headline End of an Era. A car dealership later took the site.