Vis­it­ing Twin Peaks: A place both won­der­ful and strange

FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er tells us that America’s most eccen­tric fic­tion­al town is five miles south of the Cana­di­an bor­der, 12 miles west of the state line. That’s way out in Wash­ing­ton state (rough­ly in the Colville Nation­al For­est region), but David Lynch and Mark Frost didn’t have to ven­ture to the mid­dle of nowhere to find the per­fect set­ting. They turned the much-clos­er-to-civil­i­sa­tion Sno­qualmie Val­ley into a place both won­der­ful and strange.

In select­ing this rur­al blue-col­lar par­adise, a mere 35-minute dri­ve from Seat­tle, the co-cre­ators imbued every­day locales with cult sta­tus and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance. Fans have been trav­el­ling here ever since: to walk the same old iron bridge that a blood­ied and dazed Ronette Pulas­ki crossed in the pilot episode. These spots are sacred places for fan wor­ship, and I made the pil­grim­age recent­ly to get more close­ly acquaint­ed with the world of Twin Peaks.

Sit­u­at­ed on the Kit­sap penin­su­la, just across Puget Sound on the Port Madi­son reser­va­tion, near Pouls­bo (a tiny ​‘city’ with a main drag that looks like a Dis­ney­land ver­sion of an imag­i­nary Scan­di­na­vian town), Kiana Lodge and the adja­cent lake is a supreme­ly tran­quil setting.

The show’s icon­ic open­ing scene was filmed at Kiana (the lodge backs onto the Agate Pas­sage, which dou­bled as Black Lake). It’s here a frozen, sil­ver and glis­ten­ing Lau­ra Palmer, wrapped in plas­tic, washed up dead next to a giant log.

The lodge in fact served as a mul­ti­pur­pose loca­tion. It’s the Martell house­hold exte­ri­or (Blue Pine Lodge), the Martell kitchen, Josie’s bed­room, and it pro­vid­ed the Great North­ern with its Native Amer­i­can-inspired inte­ri­ors. A rel­a­tive­ly small and very cosy estab­lish­ment, the pro­duc­tion team cer­tain­ly made the most of it.

Vis­it­ing this place made me quite emo­tion­al. Sit­ting on the water­front, you get a Twin Peaks scene in nat­ur­al widescreen. Head­ing down to the shin­gled shore­line, I stand in the exact spot Sheryl Lee lay down in the freez­ing cold. Lat­er, I stop for a moment out­side Kiana Lodge and utter Pete’s clas­sic line, ​“The lone­some foghorn blows.”

The log itself, which is chained up so that it doesn’t float away, is absolute­ly mas­sive. A small cop­per plaque, fixed to a near­by wall, com­mem­o­rates the end of film­ing in Feb­ru­ary, 1989.

There are sev­er­al points of Twin Peaks inter­est in the down­town area of Seat­tle. The Emer­ald City is allud­ed to in the show and pre­quel film, Fire Walk with Me. Chi­nese drag­on lady, Josie Packard, heads off to the big city to spend her dead husband’s mon­ey on retail therapy.

Seat­tle is also home to one of Twin Peaks’ most endur­ing mys­ter­ies: Judy. Her apart­ment (men­tioned by David Bowie’s Spe­cial Agent Phillip Jef­fries in Fire Walk with Me) is some­where in town. Horne’s depart­ment store is here, too. The build­ing por­tray­ing Horne’s can be found behind Pio­neer Square, on South Main Street and 2^nd Avenue South. Lynch shot the film’s Philadel­phia FBI office scenes at an undis­closed loca­tion on Buren Avenue.

The Cor­nish Col­lege of Arts is a bit of a trek, espe­cial­ly when it’s rain­ing non­stop (Wash­ing­ton isn’t called the Ever­green State for noth­ing). This par­tic­u­lar jaunt took me to the old per­for­mance hall, which served as the Road­house inte­ri­or in the pilot episode. It’s not open to the pub­lic, unless there’s an event on, but the build­ing remains suit­ably Twin Peaks-esque.

Dri­ving into North Bend on a sun­ny Sun­day morn­ing, this leg was undoubt­ed­ly the high­light of my trip. Lynch shot the pilot around these parts, along with much of Fire Walk with Me and six weeks-worth of loca­tion shoot­ing for Sea­son 3. There are so many Twin Peaks set­tings to dis­cov­er here, from Twin Peaks High School to Don­na and Laura’s pic­nic spot to Mount Si Motel (the Red Dia­mond Motel in Fire Walk with Me) – and there’s nev­er more than a 10-minute dri­ve from one to the next.

Ronette’s Bridge, Spark­wood and 21, the Packard Mill and the Sheriff’s office are with­in spit­ting dis­tance of each oth­er. The same goes for the Book­house and Road­house. From a pro­duc­tion sched­ule stand­point, the Sno­qualmie Val­ley was – is – perfect.

Twede’s Café is a bit on the tacky side, though. While any self-respect­ing Twin Peaks fan will be han­ker­ing for a cup of Good Morn­ing, Amer­i­ca and a slice of cher­ry pie, the own­ers have milked the restaurant’s asso­ci­a­tion with the show for all its worth. Staff wear Twin Peaks t‑shirts, and the counter is fes­tooned with crap­py mer­chan­dise, includ­ing what look like Shelly John­son dolls.

Still, I was sat in the flip­pin’ Dou­ble R and right out­side in the car park is where the Chal­fonts offered Lau­ra Palmer the weird paint­ing in Fire Walk with Me (“This would look nice on your wall”). Also, this junc­tion – the Bendi­go Boule­vard South and West North Bend Way junc­tion – is the orig­i­nal loca­tion of the town traf­fic light aka the most melan­cholic traf­fic sig­nal in the world.

The cher­ry pie is deli­cious, though the cof­fee wouldn’t pass muster with Coop. It’s not fish-in-the-per­co­la­tor ran­cid, but it’s far from damn fine. Why not serve Carl Rodd’s 48-hour blend?

The biggest and most unex­pect­ed high­light of day three was find­ing a Ford Bron­co with the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Depart­ment logo embla­zoned on the door parked up out­side the ral­ly school. Was this prop left over from the recent pro­duc­tion and gift­ed to the ral­ly school as a souvenir?

After that, it was off to Sno­qualmie Falls, Fall City and Pre­ston. The water­fall is mag­nif­i­cent and pro­vides anoth­er of the show’s icon­ic images. In Fall City, you’ll find The Book­house (which looks like a crack den), the Road­house exte­ri­or and, just across the Sno­qualmie riv­er, Hap’s Din­er from Fire Walk with Me.

The trip end­ed on a very nerdy high – a vis­it to Nadine and Big Ed’s house. A derelict shop sits on the site of Big Ed’s Gas Farm and right across the street is the (thank­ful­ly) still stand­ing Hur­ley res­i­dence. I take a moment and imag­ine crazy Nadine at the front door, yelling at her hus­band, ​“Ed, are you wait­ing for those drapes to hang themselves?”

It’s also worth not­ing the bend in the road just north of the Gas Farm. It appears in the scene where James pulls up on his motor­cy­cle and informs Big Ed that Lau­ra Palmer’s body has been discovered.