Last week, I was scouting outside Barstow along a lonely stretch of the old Route 66 when I came across what seems like nothing more than an overgrown field – but look closer and you’ll find surprising traces of what it used to be…
Standing in the middle of the 7-acre lot, you might just notice that the foliage seems to be growing oddly in parallel arcs…
The satellite view makes this more apparent, a series of concentric arcs all focused on one point… But for what purpose??
A drive-in movie screen! This was once the Bar-Len Drive-in, opened in December 1948 and so-named because it straddled the line between the desert communities of Barstow and Lenwood.
Able to accommodate 500 cars, the drive-in operated throughout much of Route 66’s cultural peak, finally closing in 1968. The screen was still standing in 1980, though in significant disrepair.
Though it’s too contemporary to be considered of much historical interest now, I always wonder if, in a few centuries, historians will point to those arcs of scrub as rare evidence of how the people of yore once sat in their cars to watch that old-fashioned contrivance: a movie.
