The Clover TheaterA Cloverdale Cinema Heritage Archive
A still life of vintage film reels and cinema artifacts

A Clover Theater Timeline

More than seventy years of small-town movie history, gathered into a single view — the key dates in the life of Cloverdale's Clover Theater.

The Milestones

  • March 28, 1950 — The theater opens as a new 450-seat, single-screen house built in the Streamline Moderne style, replacing the town's older cinema. Read about the building and its marquee.
  • January 1969 — The theater is renamed the Clover Theatre, taking its name from the town of Cloverdale.
  • Late 20th century — Like single-screen houses everywhere, it adapts to television, the multiplex, and home video; for a period it screens Spanish-language films for the changing community.
  • February 4, 2000 — The Clover expands into a small multi-screen cinema, with additional auditoriums built adjacent to the historic 1950 hall.
  • June 2013 — After the building has gone dark, a new owner launches a community crowdfunding campaign that raises more than $60,000 in just five days to fund a revival.
  • July 27, 2013 — The revived Clover reopens with a free public screening and a ribbon-cutting, backed by a nearly quarter-million-dollar investment in modern digital projection. See the full revival story.
  • August 2, 2013 — The Clover Art Program launches, bringing independent and foreign films to a rural audience.
  • 2013–2019 — For its revived decade the Clover is the only movie theater between Santa Rosa and Ukiah, pairing new releases with classics, opera, and ballet.
  • March 2020 — The theater closes with every other cinema in the country as the pandemic halts public gatherings.
  • October 2021 — After eighteen months dark, the Clover reopens into a changed moviegoing landscape.
  • Mid-October 2023 — The Clover screens its final films as attendance falls short of what the building needs to stay open.
  • November 6, 2023 — The Clover Theater closes permanently, ending more than seventy years as a fixture of downtown Cloverdale.

Keeping the Record

Dates and facts in this timeline are drawn from public heritage records, local news coverage, and archived pages of the theater's own website. Much of the building's early history is documented by volunteer researchers at Cinema Treasures, whose work makes archives like this one possible. If you can add to the record — a memory, a date, a photograph — this archive would be glad to hear from you.