 Entrance, October 2023 | |
 | |
| Address | 10400 Ford Road Dearborn, Michigan United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 42°19′55″N83°09′37″W / 42.3319°N 83.1603°W |
| Type | drive-in theater |
| Capacity | 2500 [1] |
| Screens | 5 |
| Construction | |
| Built | 1950 |
| Opened | May 19, 1950 |
| Years active | 1950-present |
Ford-Wyoming Drive-In is a drive-in theater located in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1950, it features five screens. The property previously had nine, leading it to be declared the largest drive-in theater in the world.
Clark Enterprises built the Ford-Wyoming Drive-In in 1950. The theater opened for business on May 19 of that year, with a double-bill of The Man from Colorado and Road to Rio as its first attraction. [2] Upon opening, the drive-in had the capacity for 750 cars. [3]
Wayne Amusements purchased the drive-in in 1981 and expanded it by continuing to add screens. [4] At its peak, the Ford-Wyoming had nine screens and a capacity of over 3,000 cars, leading it to become the largest drive-in theater in the world. [2] [3]
In 2006, the owners sold the land on which the sixth through ninth screens were located. [5] This decision was made due to a decline in population of the Detroit area. [6] The five screens have remained operational since this downsizing. [6] This has reduced the overall capacity to 2,500 cars. It is one of nine remaining drive-in theaters in the state of Michigan, and the only one in Metro Detroit. [1] As of 2019, the theater is owned by Charles Shafer. [6]
Dearborn is a city in Wayne County, Michigan, United States. It is an inner-ring suburb of Detroit, bordering Detroit to the south and west, roughly 7 miles (11.3 km) west of downtown Detroit. In the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976, ranking as the seventh-largest city in Michigan. Dearborn is best known as the home of the Ford Motor Company, and the birthplace and hometown of its founder, Henry Ford.
Albert Kahn was an American industrial architect who designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect-designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty-five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five-year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal.
M-1, also known as Woodward Avenue, is a north–south state trunkline highway in the Metro Detroit area of the US state of Michigan. The highway, called "Detroit's Main Street", runs from Detroit north-northwesterly to Pontiac. It is one of the five principal avenues of Detroit, along with Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson avenues. These streets were platted in 1805 by Judge Augustus B. Woodward, namesake to Woodward Avenue. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has listed the highway as the Automotive Heritage Trail, an All-American Road in the National Scenic Byways Program. It has also been designated a Pure Michigan Byway by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), and was also included in the MotorCities National Heritage Area designated by the US Congress in 1998.
Metro Detroit is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and over 200 municipalities in the surrounding area with its largest employer being Oakland County. There are varied definitions of the area, including the official statistical areas designated by the Office of Management and Budget, a federal agency of the United States.
M-10 is a state trunkline highway in the Metro Detroit area of Michigan in the United States. Nominally labeled north-south, the route follows a northwest-southeast alignment. The southernmost portion follows Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit, and the southern terminus is at the intersection of Jefferson and M-3 next to the entrance to the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel. The northern terminus is in West Bloomfield Township at the intersection with Orchard Lake Road. The highway has several names as it runs through residential and commercial areas of the west side of Detroit and into the suburb of Southfield. It is called the John C. Lodge Freeway, James Couzens Highway, and Northwestern Highway. One segment has also been named the Aretha Franklin Memorial Highway.
The Henry Ford is a history museum complex in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, United States. The museum collection contains the presidential limousine of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln's chair from Ford's Theatre, Thomas Edison's laboratory, the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop, the Rosa Parks bus, and many other historical exhibits. It is the largest indoor–outdoor museum complex in the United States and is visited by over 1.7 million people each year. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 as Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1981 as "Edison Institute".
Fair Lane was the estate of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan, in the United States. It was named after an area in Cork in Ireland where Ford's adoptive grandfather, Patrick Ahern, was born. The 1,300-acre (530 ha) estate along the River Rouge included a large limestone house, an electrical power plant on the dammed river, a greenhouse, a boathouse, riding stables, a children's playhouse, a treehouse, and extensive landmark gardens designed by Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen.
The River Rouge is a 127-mile river in the Metro Detroit area of southeastern Michigan. It flows into the Detroit River at Zug Island, which is the boundary between the cities of River Rouge and Detroit.
Southeast Michigan, also called southeastern Michigan, is a region in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan that is home to a majority of the state's businesses and industries as well as slightly over half of the state's population, most of whom are concentrated in Metro Detroit.
M-153 is an east–west state trunkline highway in the Metro Detroit area of the US state of Michigan. It is also known as Ford Road for nearly its entire length, except for its westernmost portion where the highway follows a short expressway to M-14. Named for William Ford, father of Henry Ford, Ford Road runs from near Dixboro to the Dearborn–Detroit border. The M-153 designation continues along Wyoming Avenue where it terminates at a junction with Interstate 94 (I-94) and US Highway 12 (US 12) on the city line.
Dearborn High School (DHS) is a public high school located in Dearborn, Michigan. It was founded in 1893 in Dearborn near Metro Detroit. Dearborn High is one of the three high schools of the Dearborn City School District and is located at 19501 Outer Drive. There are over 2,000 students currently attending Dearborn High.
Fairlane Town Center is a super-regional shopping mall in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. The mall is adjacent to The Henry Hotel, The Fairlane Club, the University of Michigan–Dearborn, Henry Ford Community College, The Henry Ford, and the Ford Motor Company headquarters. The anchor stores are Macy's and JCPenney, with vacant anchor spaces last occupied by AMC Theatres, Sears, and Ford Motor Company offices.
Tourism in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is a significant factor for the region's culture and for its economy, comprising nine percent of the area's two million jobs. About 19 million people visit Metro Detroit spending an estimated 6 billion in 2019. In 2009, this number was about 15.9 million people, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Detroit is one of the largest American cities and metropolitan regions to offer casino resort hotels. Leading multi-day events throughout Metro Detroit draw crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. More than fifteen million people cross the highly traveled nexus of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel annually. Detroit is at the center of an emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis. An estimated 46 million people live within a 300-mile (480 km) radius of Metro Detroit.
The metropolitan area surrounding and including Detroit, Michigan, is a ten-county area with a population of over 5.9 million, a workforce of 2.6 million, and about 347,000 businesses. Detroit's six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of about 4.3 million, a workforce of about 2.1 million, and a gross metropolitan product of $200.9 billion. Detroit's urban area has a population of 3.9 million. A 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimated that Detroit's urban area had a gross domestic product of $203 billion.
The Detroit metropolitan area in southeast Michigan is served by a comprehensive network of roads and highways. Three primary Interstate Highways pass through the region, along with three auxiliary Interstates, and multiple state and U.S. Highways. These are supplemented by the Mile Road System, a series of local roads spaced one mile apart on a perpendicular grid.
The Dearborn Inn, A Marriott Hotel is a historic hotel in the suburban city of Dearborn, Michigan in Metro Detroit. It opened in 1931 and closed in February 2023 for renovations. It was conceived by Henry Ford, who saw a need for food and accommodations for visitors flying into the nearby Ford Airport, making it one of the first airport hotels. It is located at 20301 Oakwood Boulevard near The Henry Ford and the world headquarters building of Ford Motor Company. Albert Kahn designed the Dearborn Inn in the Georgian architectural style. The Dearborn Inn is owned by Ford Motor Land Development Corporation and managed by Marriott International.
Transportation in metropolitan Detroit comprises an expansive system of roadways, multiple public transit systems, a major international airport, freight railroads, and ports. Located on the Detroit River along the Great Lakes Waterway, Detroit is a significant city in international trade, with two land crossings to Canada. Three primary Interstate highways serve the region.
The Ford Rotunda was a tourist attraction that was originally located on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and later was relocated to Dearborn, Michigan. It was among the most popular tourist destinations in the United States, receiving more visits in the 1950s than the Statue of Liberty. It was destroyed by a fire on November 9, 1962.
The Henry Ford II World Center, also commonly known as the Ford World Headquarters and popularly known as the Glass House, is the administrative headquarters for Ford Motor Company, a 12-story, glass-faced office building designed to accommodate a staff of approximately 3,000. The building is located at 1 American Road at Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, Michigan, near Ford's historic Rouge plant, Greenfield Village, the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn's Henry Ford Centennial Library, and Fair Lane, Henry Ford's personal estate.
Clara Jane Bryant Ford was the wife of Henry Ford. She was an active suffragist and was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.