The History of the Boulevard Drive-In

The Flooding

The immediate area, including business and residential communities is subject to frequent and sometimes severe flooding from near by Turkey Creek.

The first flooding happened in 1957. Since then they have become more frequent and more severe because of the extensive development up stream. (More concrete and asphalt) The creek flows within 100 feet of the south side of the drive in, in fact, it is on drive in property. The main cause of the drive in flooding is that it has to pass under a narrow railroad bridgc, just past the drive in. The bridge is too narrow to handle the flow of water without backing it up into the neighborhood. As a consequence we have a flood now once a ycar, sometimes twice a year. With a 2-inch rain within 2 hours you can bet we will flood.

They called it the Great Flood of 1993. There was wide spread flooding all over the country. There was five feet of water in our snack bar, in fact one of our female employees was trapped inside the snack bar by the fast rising water. She climbed onto a counter, the water came up to her shoulders and her head was inches from the ceiling when the firemen came to the rescue. They could not pull her into the boat because the popcorn oil and fry grease had come to the top of the water. (The greased pig effect.) One fireman dove under the water and pushed her from the bottom up into the boat.

That flood ruined about every thing in the drive in. All the machinery had to be rebuilt or replaced.

It turned out that the 1993 flood was not so great after all, for in 1998 there was another one that was 8 feet deep, it covered the concession stand completely. It was total devastation!

That was in October. It took until March to remove 4 inches of mud from the 7-acre field. Then came the rebuilding. Many people asked, Why Bother?

After the 1998 f1ood the theatre opened on March 6, 1999 and on Sunday night June 26th guess what! Another flood with 4 feet of water in the building. A local TV news crew came and was shooting some footage. I asked them to tell the public that we would be opcn on Wednesday night showing "The Wild Wild West". They did and on July 1Oth just 14 days later on a Saturday night, we had an over capacity crowd. The first time in 25 years.