Six places in the US where you can sleep at a drive-in

From retro 1950s properties to modern glamping sites, these places are reviving one of the US's most enduring pastimes – and offering travellers one last classic summer experience.

At the Frontier Drive-Inn, there are no televisions in the guest rooms. Instead, as the property rather cheekily puts it, the biggest TV in southern Colorado is right outside your door.

That would be the outdoor screen left over from the Frontier's first life as a drive-in cinema, which opened in 1955 and went dark three decades later. Today, the former cinema anchors a retro-inspired hotel where guests sleep in Quonset-style yurts and vintage trailers, then gather outside for films beneath the famously dark skies of the San Luis Valley.

As Labor Day (7 September) approaches, the Frontier and other properties like it are providing a fresh take on one of the US's most enduring warm-weather pastimes – and offering one last classic summer experience before the season winds down.

For generations of Americans, drive-ins have been inseparable from summer. The country's first drive-in opened in 1933, but they exploded after WWII, when rising car ownership, suburban expansion and the baby boom helped push their number to nearly 5,000 by the late 1950s, according to April Wright, a drive-in historian and director of Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie in which she visits roughly 500 open, abandoned or former drive-in sites.

"Going to the drive-in was just something you did every summer," Wright said.

Though their heyday may have passed, Wright says the appeal of drive-ins isn't purely nostalgic. Plenty of younger visitors are experiencing them for the first time, drawn to the fact that a night at the drive-in is as much about the ritual around the film as the film itself.

"What it's always been about, and what it is still about today, is spending time with friends and family, and creating an experience," Wright said.

Now, a handful of hotels, motels and campgrounds around the US are turning that experience into an overnight stay. Some have revived long-shuttered drive-ins, while others let guests sleep within sight of giant screens that have been showing films for decades. At these properties, film night doesn't end with the final credits.

Frontier Drive-Inn – Center, Colorado

When the Frontier was redeveloped, its original 1950s screen and roadside sign were among the few pieces of the old drive-in still standing – and both have been preserved.

Luke Falcone, co-owner of Frontier, said the screen had survived decades of the San Luis Valley's harsh weather and was too important to the site's history to lose. "When doing historic preservation projects, if you come across something that isn't broken, you've hit the........

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