The Briarwood Dollar Movies are closing, which means it's time to look for the obscure parts of the Internet where people who track openings and closings of establishments squirrel away bits of knowledge for later use.

I'll feature three databases like this in today's links post: a directory of classic and closed movie theaters, a comprehensive encyclopedia of Michigan attractions and a database of abandoned airfields. Each are in their own peculiar way part of the same story of adaptive reuse of the land and buildings as technology and culture changes.

Cinema Treasures - old movie theaters

Cinema Treasures is a website devoted to "movie theater preservation and awareness." It is organized as a guide to classic movie theaters, with nearly 28,900 theaters listed all over the world. A typical entry will include a short account of the theater's origin, who built it, when it opened and when it closed. Almost 1,600 photos are in the collection.

The database shows 17 theaters in Ann Arbor, plus another five theaters in Ypsilanti. The entry for the 1915 Martha Washington Theater in Ypsilanti is typical, with a bare bones description of the history of the venue and additional comments from readers pointing to photos.

Water Winter Wonderland - Michigan attractions

The Water Winter Wonderland site includes some of the movie theaters listed in Cinema Treasures, but it goes beyond that for sites within Michigan only and also lists race tracks, amusement parks, resorts, motels, and other tourist attractions throughout the state.

This database entry for Showcase Cinemas has a remarkable amount of detail, with the count of seats in various theaters, photos of the exterior and the parking lot and a chronicle of the fast food establishments that had been in the theater. The historical part of the drive-in collection also has details of the University Drive-In, which was located on the same site; they have preserved the grand opening advertisement from July 9, 1965.

Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields

Paul Freeman's Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields is a wonderful and curious collection of information about landing strips and airfields which no longer exist. The site contains descriptions and images of more than 1,400 airfields in all 50 states.

One of these listings is Young Airport, located northwest of the intersection of Jackson Road and North Staebler Road in Scio Township. The airport opened in 1946. Over the years a drive-in movie theater (the Scio Drive-In) opened on a corner of the airport's property, forcing a realignment of the runways. "Young Airport evidently was closed (for reasons unknown) at some point between 1976-80," writes the guide, basing its understanding on a look at airport listings.

Directories, wonderful and incomplete

Each of these directories is wonderful in that it has a comprehensive list of as many items of its kind as it can locate. No movie theater too insignificant, no drive-in too temporary, and no airstrip too grassy is out of scope for these collections.

Many of the accounts in each of these databases are incomplete. Certainly someone knows more about Young Airport, or can tell more stories about the Scio Drive-In; the challenge is in capturing each of these in some way that you intersect the interest of the local historian who knows a lot about an area and the topical historian who knows a lot about a particular piece of industrial or cultural history.

Edward Vielmetti searches for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.