North Bend, Washington

Where it sits. North Bend is a town of around 8,000 at the confluence of the Middle and South Forks of the Snoqualmie River, 50 km east of Seattle at the point where Interstate 90 stops crossing farmland and starts climbing toward Snoqualmie Pass. The valley floor is flat, green and often fogged; directly above it stands Mount Si, a 1,270-metre wall of folded rock that looks considerably bigger than its elevation because it rises straight off the valley with nothing in front of it. Snoqualmie, with its falls and its restored railway, is five minutes north; Fall City is ten minutes northwest.

The story behind it. Settlers took up the prairie here in the 1860s and 1870s, and the townsite was platted at the end of the 1880s by William Taylor, taking its name from the bend in the river. Logging built it: the Weyerhaeuser mill in neighbouring Snoqualmie ran until 2003, and the valley's economy since has shifted to commuters, outdoor recreation and an outlet mall by the freeway. The population has roughly doubled since 2000, which is visible in the newer subdivisions on the valley floor and in the queue for parking at every trailhead. The old downtown is four blocks of North Bend Way, wide enough for logging trucks to turn in, with a hardware store, a couple of bars, a bakery and the drive-in burger stand at the eastern end that has been there since the 1950s. The valley is also flood country: the Snoqualmie regularly spills across the fields between here and Fall City in November and December, which is why so much of the farmland has never been built on.

On screen, which is why many people come. The Snoqualmie Valley is Twin Peaks country. David Lynch and Mark Frost shot the 1989 pilot here and returned in 2017 for Twin Peaks: The Return, and the locations are close enough together to walk or drive in a morning:

• Twede's Cafe, 137 West North Bend Way, is the Double R Diner — the cherry pie and the damn fine cup of coffee. It opened in 1941 as the Testy Chef, spent decades as the Mar-T Cafe, and was gutted by fire in 2000, after which the interior was rebuilt in a chrome-and-vinyl style that had nothing to do with the show. For the 2017 revival the production restored the 1990 look, and the cafe kept it. Both exterior and interior were used on screen.
• The Welcome to Twin Peaks sign was placed on Reinig Road in Snoqualmie, on the sycamore-lined straight above the old mill site.
• The Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department is the former Weyerhaeuser mill office in Snoqualmie, now a rally-driving school.
• The Roadhouse exterior is the Colonial Inn at Fall City, and the high school was Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie.
• The Great Northern Hotel exterior is the Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls — but its interiors were shot at Kiana Lodge, across Puget Sound near Poulsbo.

A related correction: Northern Exposure, the other early-1990s Pacific Northwest series people conflate with this one, was filmed in Roslyn, about 90 km east over Snoqualmie Pass, and has nothing to do with this valley. A fan festival has run in the Snoqualmie Valley since 1993, filling local lodging for a long weekend each summer.

The mountain. The Mount Si trail climbs roughly 960 metres in 6.4 km to a bench below the Haystack, the rock block that forms the true summit and requires a genuine scramble to top out. It is one of the most-hiked trails in Washington, with well over 100,000 ascents a year, partly because it is the closest serious elevation gain to Seattle and partly because generations of climbers have used it as a training lap. Little Si, next door, is 5 km round trip and much gentler. Rattlesnake Ledge, at Rattlesnake Lake south of town, gives a similar valley view for 6.5 km round trip and is even busier. A Discover Pass is required on the state-managed trailheads, and the lots fill before eight on summer weekends.

Getting there and timing. Take I-90 to exits 31 or 32; there is limited bus service from Issaquah and Seattle. The valley is walkable and compact, but the trails are steep and rocky, and the shoulder seasons bring mud, ice above 600 metres and genuine avalanche terrain further up the pass. Autumn fog in the valley — the atmosphere the series traded on — is a real and frequent phenomenon between October and January. Twede's opens early and turns over quickly; the pie is not the reason to go, but ordering it is part of the ritual anyway.