Twin Peaks Film Location – The Zone from Part 11

In Twin Peaks Part 11 on Showtime, Bill Hastings leads FBI Agents Cole, Rosenfield and Preston along with Buckhorn Detective Macklay to the location where he claims to have seen Major Briggs. The address for the location is 2240 Sycamore in Buckhorn, South Dakota. But where was the scene filmed for the series?

In reality, the Zone scene was filmed next to 16493 Sierra Hwy, Canyon Country, California. The address, which is actually 16515 Sierra Hwy, was occupied by someone in 2007-2008 and was listed for sale in December 2011 by Keller-Davis Real Estate.

So how did I find it? The easiest answer – by dumb luck … or maybe divine intervention from Major Briggs.

FINDING THE ZONE

Part 11 aired on Showtime on July 23, 2017. I had attempted to find the Zone location a few times. I found several reference photos from July 23, September 3 and October 26 on my phone but I could never find the actual spot.

On February 8, 2018, a tweet from Travis Blue, a fellow long-time Twin Peaks fan and location hunter, prompted me to try again. His tweet was a challenge, and it made me determined to find it! By 7:46 p.m., that evening, I shared happy news on Twitter.

The scene runs about 7m 30s, so I first looked for clues to help with my quest – a street sign, geographic marker, architectural detail, a street address.

The scene takes place close to a road in an area surrounded by mountains or hills. In the background, I spotted what appeared to be a service garage. The property also had bright red and blue shipping containers, a clue that would prove vital to finding the exact location.

Rumors were the scene was filmed in Van Nuys, CA. It made sense to me since several to the nearby Japanese Gardens. Over the summer and fall, I looked around Van Nuys but couldn’t find anything that matched. The area was too residential and didn’t have hills.

TRYING PIRU, CALIFORNIA

I also heard from fellow Twin Peaks location hunter Ivan (check out his Twin Peaks location website) that Piru, California might be the spot. Funny thing is the town is located next to Buckhorn! But it’s a different Buckhorn than used in the series (which establishing shots were actually captured in Butte, Montana).

I found utility poles in Piru that looked similar to ones from the Zone scene.  But that was the only detail that sort of matched.

So I expanded my search to include Santa Clarita and Agua Dulce.

I looked for spots I thought might contain shipping containers then took a closer look using street view on Google Maps. Nothing. I mean NOTHING!

THANK YOU MAJOR BRIGGS

At this point, I’d just about given up hope. Zooming in, scrolling left, then right, then zooming out. The process can be exhausting, especially after searching through several towns.

For some reason still unclear to me today, I moved my mouse from Agua Dulce down the Sierra Highway and zoomed in looking for the blue and red containers.

And then there they were. I was speechless. I couldn’t believe I found THE ZONE!

Using street view, I confirmed the surrounding buildings matched the buildings in Part 11. The garage building is actually Cornejo Tire on Arline Street (the road behind the Zone location).

LOCATION COMPARISON

Below is a comparison of scenes from Part 11 with images from Google Maps. Sadly, street view is limited and I couldn’t get exact angles for the shots.

You can see where some of the scenes took place in this aerial view of the Zone location:

OTHER DETAILS FROM THE ZONE

I noticed other details about the Zone sequence including a reversed scene when a Woodsman appears behind the house.

The original scene appears at 9m 47s mark, while the reversed scene appears around the 14m 18 s mark.

Finally, a part of this scene was used in one of the first teaser trailers Showtime released on December 18, 2015!