When the Iceberg Drive-In opened for business, the Cold War was on, Elvis Presley was a new sensation, nobody had heard of Vietnam, and Draper was a sleepy one-horse town in an empty corner of the Salt Lake Valley.
The Iceberg sold ice cream cones for a nickel then. Hamburgers were two bits."That was when there were still chickens in town," said Don Ballard, who took over the restaurant in 1976 after his parents retired.
Today a cone is 75 cents at the drive-in; burgers are almost a dollar. The chickens are gone, and the entire face of once-rural Draper has changed.
The new 65-acre Hidden Valley Shopping Center on the north edge of town has spawned five-lane streets into Draper from adjacent Sandy, threatening the historical commercial heart of town.
Fearful of the competition posed by a 40,000-square-foot Albertsons in the new shopping center, the town's former sole grocery store, Frank's Food Town, is closing its doors after 37 years of business.
In the midst of a half-off sale earlier this month, owner Frank Smith said, "People have been coming into this dad-gummed store today with tears in their eyes."
Ballard said the Iceberg will rely on its loyal customers to survive. The shopping center will have at least three restaurants, probably of the fast-food variety.
Impending development between I-15 and the drive-in, at 673 E. 12300 South, will bring more competition.
"It's not going to kill us, but it hurts me as a resident," said Stacey Reed, owner of Porcelain Doll Works in the city's small downtown commercial district. "It's not our Draper anymore. It's just an extension of Sandy.
"The old part of Draper is going to die, and the new part will probably thrive really well," she said.
But like many residents, Reed's feelings are mixed: "I like having the convenience, but I hate paying the price."
Will Webster, owner of Draper Hardware, the oldest continuously operated hardware store in Salt Lake County, worries that competition from a new lumber and hardware store will bury his business.
Anderson Lumber Co., coming to town soon at a location near Hidden Valley, has far deeper pockets than Webster's, and Webster said the only advantage he will have is his business's mom-and-pop ambience.
"When people come in, I help them however I can," said Webster, scrambling to get a handful of odd-size screws from a back-room bin.
The shopping center, which is nearing completion, will have more than 400,000 square feet of retail space, room enough for the major anchors - Albertsons, Payless Drugs, Kmart - and 20 or 30 smaller stores. It will bring direct competition for locally owned stores that now include a video-rental outlet, a tanning salon, the town drugstore and maybe even the tiny downtown movie theater.
Dale Johnson, the shopping center's broker-developer, said there is more to come as deals are struck between landowners and business interests for locations along 12300 South, the main corridor into town.
Already, Draper has proved its pull. The Albertsons, which sits on an elevated site with a view of the town, is a solid draw, said store manager Dale Baxter.
"We get people from all over," said Baxter. "Bluffdale, Riverton, Sandy, Draper, even the other side of Point of the Mountain."
And success knows no hours.
The grocery store, which is the biggest model Albertsons builds in Utah, is open 24 hours a day, its floodlighted parking lot bringing a permanent daytime to the neighborhood.