88 Drive-In
drive-in movie theater in Commerce City, Colorado, United States
88 Drive-In (formerly East 88th Avenue Drive-In) is a drive-in theater in the Irondale neighborhood of Commerce City, a suburb of Denver.
History
1970s
Following a successful neighborhood petition for a zoning variance, East 88th Avenue Drive-in opened in August 1971. It was one of three theaters established by Paul Cory, who had also operated the Starlite Drive-In in Sterling, Colorado. The 1971 season was reportedly unprofitable, and in 1972 the drive-in began showing X-rated movies. The neighborhood, that was initially enthusiastic about the new drive-in, was disappointed with this turn of events. Drivers passing by were said to be distracted the by the X-rated films. A fence was erected around the roof of a nearby school to prevent students from climbing to the top of the building at night to watch the X-rated films. To address these issues, the drive-in first tried to build a fence measuring 30 feet (9.1 m) high around the perimeter of the property, but were denied by local authorities. A similar effort to hang a large light screen around the property draped from tall poles was also rejected by the county. In November 1972, Cory explained to court authorities that he had sold the drive-in to Olympic Drive-In Theatres of St.
“88 Drive-In” enters the record as drive-in movie theater in Commerce City, Colorado, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Drive-In, drive-in and movie can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“88 Drive-In” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Drive-In, drive-in and movie provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q42384376. Authority coordinates are 39.856, -104.900. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “88 Drive-In” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.