Three Days in Twin Peaks: An In-Depth Journey Through the Evocative Locations of David Lynch’s TV Series

After a time of great per­son­al loss, a friend of mine set off on a road trip around the Unit­ed States. When I lat­er asked what part of the coun­try had made the deep­est impres­sion on him, he named a few towns about thir­ty miles east of Seat­tle: the shoot­ing loca­tions, he hard­ly need­ed tell a fel­low David Lynch fan, of Twin Peaks. Raised in Spokane, Wash­ing­ton, among a vari­ety of oth­er mod­est Amer­i­can cities, Lynch saw clear­ly the look and feel of the tit­u­lar set­ting by the time he co-cre­at­ed the show with writer Mark Frost. He even­tu­al­ly found it in the Wash­ing­ton­ian towns of Sno­qualmie, North Bend and Fall City, which even today offer a friend­ly recep­tion to the occa­sion­al Twin Peaks pil­grim — at least accord­ing to my friend.

This was more recent­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Jere­mi­ah Beaver, cre­ator of Youtube “Twin Peaks the­o­ry and analy­sis show” Take the Ring. Thir­ty years after the pre­miere of the famous­ly cryp­tic yet trans­fix­ing orig­i­nal series, the Indi­anapo­lis-based Beaver made the trip to Wash­ing­ton to vis­it its every remain­ing loca­tion — as well as those used in the 1992 pre­quel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, and even these pro­duc­tions’ delet­ed scenes.

Into the half-hour-long “Three Days in Twin Peaks” Beaver fits a great deal of infor­ma­tion relat­ed to Twin Peaks’ pro­duc­tion and mythos as well as the real-life his­to­ry of the rel­e­vant places. “It was at times hard to dis­tin­guish the Twin Peaks that lived in my imag­i­na­tion ver­sus the ground beneath my feet,” he admits.

Beaver makes his way to loca­tions both major and minor, from the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment (now the Dirt­Fish Ral­ly Rac­ing School) and the Dou­ble R din­er (Twede’s Cafe, “one of the few spots in Wash­ing­ton state that real­ly owns its Peakness”) to the shack of the Book House bik­er club and the bench in E.J. Roberts Park once sat upon by the late Har­ry Dean Stan­ton’s Carl Robb. Some real build­ings played dual roles: both Twin Peaks’ Blue Pine Lodge and Great North­ern Hotel are in real­i­ty dif­fer­ent parts of Pouls­bo’s Kiana Lodge, and the Mt. Si Motel appears as “two dif­fer­ent motels with ele­ments of the super­nat­ur­al,” first in Fire Walk with Me, then even more seed­i­ly in The Return. “That fresh moun­tain air and smell of trees is no joke,” says Beaver, words to heed if you plan on mak­ing your own Twin Peaks pil­grim­age — and if you do, you can sure­ly guess how he describes the cof­fee and cher­ry pie at Twede’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Expe­ri­ence David Lynch’s Clas­sic Show

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A Four-Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.