The drive-ins, II: East 30, Hillcrest, Lincolndale, and the end of the outdoor era

1950 — 1991

Three more screens under the sky: The East 30 Drive-In, at 7500 SR-930 East on the old U.S. 30 toward New Haven, opened on October 6, 1950, with Randolph Scott in The Nevadan; it was opened by Carl H. Schwyn, and by 1953 it was in the hands of Brailey-Browning Inc. and United Booking Services, later passing, like the Bluffton house, through Alliance and Cinecom to Sportservice. The Hillcrest Drive-In, at 720 East Tillman Road, opened on June 15, 1951, holding 500 cars; it was operated in the early 1950s by Charles Loudenslager and Indianapolis Co-Op Theatres, and its sunburst marquee sign stood by the road for years afterward in local photographs. The Lincolndale Drive-In, at 1422 Goshen Road beside Franke Park, opened on September 11, 1953, with a double bill — George Montgomery in Jack McCall, Desperado and Sterling Hayden in Flat Top — under the United Film Booking Service; it was the drive-in woven most closely into the city's own ground, and when it closed on September 8, 1979, its owners moved its screen to the new Lincolndale they built at Warsaw in mid-1980. The city acquired the abandoned Goshen Road property in 1985; today the old drive-in entrance serves Franke Park's Goshen Road entrance, part of the lot is overflow parking for the Foellinger Outdoor Theatre, and the screen's foundation is the last physical trace. A sixth name, the Northcrest Drive-In, appears in Cinema Treasures' Fort Wayne listings and in one account of Alliance's Fort Wayne houses, but no opening or closing date or site for it was established in the sources reached.

The last to close: The outdoor era ended in stages: the Lincolndale in 1979, the Fort Wayne Drive-In in 1985, and the Hillcrest at the end of the 1987 season. The East 30's closing is carried two ways — Cinema Treasures gives the end of the 1987 season, while the Journal Gazette's 2020 retrospective names the East 30, in 1991, as the last Allen County drive-in to close. With it, the county's drive-in age ended; the Gazette counted the survivors in the region at the Auburn-Garrett Drive-In (opened 1951), Huntington's Twin (1950), and Wabash's 13-24 (1951) — all outside the county — against a state that had held 128 drive-ins in 1955 and held 19 in 2020. Every Fort Wayne drive-in site is now parking, paths, or roadside commerce, and the houses survive the way the Hillcrest's sign did for a time: in photographs and in the memory of the rows.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, D named places (Drive-in Movie Theaters), copying Cinema Treasures — the East 30 (7500 SR-930 East; opened October 6, 1950, with "The Nevadan"; Carl H. Schwyn, then Brailey-Browning and United Booking by 1953; closed at the end of the 1987 season) and the Hillcrest (720 E. Tillman Road; Loudenslager and Indianapolis Co-Op Theatres; closed at the end of the 1987 season); L named places — the Lincolndale on Goshen Road and the screen's move to Warsaw.
2. Cinema Treasures, Lincolndale Drive-In and its comments — the September 11, 1953 opening bill, the United Film Booking Service operation, the September 8, 1979 closing, the screen's removal to Warsaw in mid-1980, the 1422 Goshen Avenue address, and the surviving screen foundation; Holiday 6 comments — the Hillcrest's June 15, 1951 opening advertisement; Jefferson Theatre comments — the Northcrest Drive-In named among Alliance's Fort Wayne houses.
3. City of Fort Wayne parks chronology, 1980–1985 — the city's 1985 acquisition of the abandoned Lincolndale property adjacent to Franke Park; ACGSI, Franke Park page — the drive-in entrance's reuse as the park's Goshen Road entrance and the Foellinger overflow parking.
4. Blake Sebring, The Journal Gazette, April 23, 2020 — the East 30 (1991) and Hillcrest (1987) as the last to close, Indiana's 128 drive-ins in 1955 against 19 in 2020, and the surviving Auburn-Garrett, Huntington, and Wabash houses; carried in the entry against the Cinema Treasures date for the East 30.