The Deer Lake Drive-In was on the east side of PA Route 61 about a mile from the town of Deer Lake.
It opened March 31, 1956 with Bing Crosby in “Anything Goes” & Lloyd Bridges in “Apache Woman”. 600 cars strong were able to view movies during its prime..
This famous drive in ceased operation in the 1990s..
Those who recall the amazing summer nights under the giant theater will recall watching in sadness as the screen, ticket booth and concession stand were all demolished in 1996.
The opening night ad said you can get in for just a mere $.55 while kids under 12 were free!
Undoubtedly excitement was in the air for ‘ANYTHING GOES’ in the spring opening..
As all drive-ins of the era went, the time of excitement eventually quelled..
Urban sprawl and higher tech air conditioned theaters eventually ruled..
On June 21, 1985, the POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN reported about “drive ins hanging on to their space” on a front page splash.. The paper described that an American way of life was changing due to urban growth. That drive ins were dying away…
But Deer Lake was celebrated! The little drive-in still could, it would seem.. Pottsville was portrayed as growing but not nearly the megatropolis that other cities were becoming. So, in a sense, the old time still played on at night, on that big outside theater under the stars. The Republican reported that Donald Fox, the president of Fox Theaters in Reading, said this at the time that the Deer Lake drive-in had a culture “that will last as long as boys date girls and families go to movies together.”
By the 1990s.. it was over.
The Drive-in was history.
But that did not stop a last and final attempt to resurrect the drive-in from the ashes it was becoming (and eventually history)..
In 2002, a petition started by Nicholas Yutko to ‘save the drive-in’ at Deer Lake.
He attempted to organize a grass rots effort to re-open the Deer Lake drive-in..
But that petition didn’t matter..
It was officially sold in 2005.
The screen, ticket booth, marquis, and concession stand were all demolished in 2007 in preparation for construction of Geisinger Medical Center, St. Luke’s Geisinger Hospital, which now stands on the location that the Deer Lake drive-in once was…
The Deer Lake Drive-In became a symbol of a dying past.
For years it stood along Route 61 as a reminder of what once was.. those nightly forays into entertainment and moon-lit makeout sessions.. Eventually gone. Just like so many more before it. Into the scrap heap of history. A new roadway was created…new construction. New business. And a landscape forever erased of any passing memory that made you doubt this once great drive-in fitting 600 automobiles ever even existed to begin with.
