While the Twilight books imagined Forks as an idyllic setting for a century-old vampire-werewolf rivalry, the real tension in the town prior to 2005 was between loggers and environmentalists. The town historian, Christi Baron, remembers a travel writer penning a mean review of Forks just before the first Twilight book came out, describing the town as something like “a festering boil” on the Peninsula.Īs for the area’s natural beauty, it didn’t always inspire unity among the locals. Sure, Forks was a real place, population 3,900, with towering spruce and an abundance of rain, but it was mostly seen as a stop along the way to other places: the mossy Olympic National Park or Washington’s coastal beaches, with their craggy rocks shrouded in the ocean mist. Wolfgang Kaehler / LightRocket via Getty Imagesīut at that time, the town that Twilight fans found themselves falling in love with didn’t actually exist - at least, not in the way Stephenie Meyer, the author of the series, described it. Sun rays break through the trees in the temperate rainforest on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula near Forks, Washington.

“They feel a real connection in their heart to this little town in the Pacific Northwest.” “The thing about Forks is - and it happened with me, it’s happened with thousands of people - people come to Forks, and then they feel like Forks is the hometown they never had,” said Lissy Andros, a Twilight fan who moved from Texas to Forks in 2009 and now directs the town’s Chamber of Commerce.

Twilight lovers’ attachment to Forks’ natural setting proved stronger than previous visitors. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Forks was, in Bella’s words, “beautiful, of course I couldn’t deny that. It didn’t take long after Twilight came out in 2005 for fans to start flocking to Forks, where the fictional flames of Bella and Edward Cullen’s romance began. “It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America.”Įven though Bella is not initially a fan of Forks (out of context, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were reading an anti-travel brochure), the old logging town’s moody, verdant aesthetic has become a central part of Twilight fandom.

“In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds,” Bella narrates in a tone that’s equal parts Wikipedia entry and teenage snark. The first chapter of Twilight begins with 17-year-old Bella Swan getting dropped off at the Phoenix airport, preparing to trade the hot Arizona sun for the soggy gloom of Forks, Washington. This story is part of Grist’s Summer Dreams arts and culture series, a weeklong exploration of how popular fiction can influence our environmental reality.

Why do the vampires in twilight sparkle