The theater opened on September 22, 1949, four years before the first local television stations signed on in the Joplin-Springfield area.

[2][3] In an era before widespread adoption of transistors and before the invention of integrated circuits, car radios were not standard equipment in all vehicles.

A series of poles in the car park of the nine-acre site were therefore deployed to hold loudspeakers so that viewers could hear the movie.

[2] A drive-in movie venue with many strong similarities to the original 66 Drive-In design (such as the original 4:3 screen aspect ratio, pole-mounted speakers and neon signage on the marquée) appears during the epilogue of Pixar's 2006 film Cars.

The fictional drive-in is depicted as screening parody versions of other Pixar feature films.