Redwood Drive-In
Redwood City, California1961-1987
Order Redwood Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. Syufy Enterprises opened the Redwood on East Bayshore Road in June 1961 with The Magnificent Seven, under a screen 90 feet tall and 130 feet wide, set 30 feet off the ground so the back rows could see. The last of its four screens went dark in September 1987 with Born in East L.A. and Hamburger Hill. Choose a style below, and find the full Redwood history further down. Every shirt is printed to order in the USA and carries the memories of bygone places and teams.
4 products
Redwood Drive-In History
The Redwood Drive-In in Redwood City, California, opened on June 14, 1961, at 557 East Bayshore Road, built by Syufy Enterprises of San Francisco. Its opening ad told drivers to take the Whipple Avenue overpass to the bay side of the Bayshore Freeway and promised free car heaters. The first bill was The Magnificent Seven, The Sundowners and Disney's Jungle Cat.
A Boxoffice roundup of drive-ins reported in 1960 listed the project at 1,100 cars. A local historian puts it at about 1,300 cars, with one screen 90 feet tall and 130 feet wide, its bottom edge 30 feet off the ground so the back rows could see. Syufy claimed that made it the tallest outdoor movie screen in the world, a claim no one seems to have tested. Three smaller screens came in the 1970s. A dusk photo from about 1975 shows a marquee under the big screen, framed by a zigzag edge like cloth cut with pinking shears, with Emmanuelle sharing the board with Brannigan and The Great Waldo Pepper.
The four screens didn't close together. One went dark on March 31, 1987, one on August 2, one on September 3, and the last on September 13, with Born in East L.A. and Hamburger Hill. The drive-in was torn down, and Syufy's Century Park 12 opened on the land in October 1989. That closed in 2008, and apartments were going up on the site in 2025.