Team Edward or Team Jacob? Twilight fans continue to flock to Forks 15 years after movie release
Years after the Twilight saga exploded, the small city of Forks, where it’s based, is still seeing high numbers of fans visiting.
Eighteen years ago, the first Twilight book was released, and it’s been 15 years since the first movie hit the big screen.
The Forks Chamber of Commerce asks people to sign a guest book and through that, they’ve tracked visitation statistics. Those numbers show visitation peaked in 2009 and 2010 with about 70,000 visitors each year. Now, 2023 is the third-highest visited year for the city.
Top visited years in Forks:
2010 – 72,885 visitors
2009 – 69,975 visitors
2023 – 60,389 visitors (through October)
2022 – 56,237 visitors
The average visitation to the town pre-Twilight ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 per year.
Forks leaders credit the increased interest to multiple recent milestones for the franchise.
In 2020, author Stephenie Meyer published a new book in the series called “Midnight Sun,” which is Twilight told from Edward’s perspective. Plus, Netflix added the movies to the streaming platform. While people were at home during the pandemic, they read and watched these, rekindling excitement.
Mary Beth Thurman and her husband are the owners of the Miller Tree Inn in Forks and have seen the recent peaked interest.
“That started the Twilight renaissance as we like to call it and with the Twilight renaissance came a whole new generation of Twilighters,” said Thurman.
None of the movie was actually filmed in Forks, so leaders have worked to cultivate destinations for people visiting with Twilight in mind.
One of those places is Thurman’s Inn. It matches the description of the Cullen’s home, the main vampire family in the story, so they branded it as that.
“She describes the Cullen house as being about 100 years old, an old white farmhouse at the edge of town,” said Thurman.They’ve decorated the home with nods to the story, including Dr. Cullen’s office, which the movie’s actor visited and took a photo inside, further increasing excitement for visitors.
“A lot of our guests will try to recreate this,” she said, laughing and holding up the photo of him in the chair.
Another destination that the city created is the Forever Twilight in Forks Gallery, which features a room full of costumes and props used on the movie sets.
Lissy Andros runs the museum and said since it opened in 2017, they’ve seen 77,000 people come through.
Andros first moved to Forks because of Twilight. She recalls getting the book for Christmas in 2008.
“I was like, ‘Oh I’ll just pick up this stupid book’,” she said. Then, “100 pages in, I was die-hard.”
She said she related to Edward’s character because he lived forever and felt like he had nothing to look forward to. She was ready for a change, so she packed up and moved to Forks. Now, she not only runs the museum but is also the executive director of the Forks Chamber of Commerce.
With 2023 just a few thousand visitors short of the second-best visited year (2009) and two months left to go, these women agree that the Twilight hype is alive and well.
“Everybody outside of Forks thinks ‘Oh Twilight is dead,’ or there’s really nothing going on with it, and when you come to Forks and you see everything that’s happening with Twilight, it really blows people’s mind,” said Andros.
They point out that with every fan who visits, they’re spending money on food and lodging and at local shops, so this increased interest is helping the city’s economy as a whole.
Thurman added that there are rumors of the franchise expanding even more, so they’re hopeful that this momentum will continue.
“If these things come to fruition, Twilight’s not going anywhere for a very long time, but to be honest I don’t think it’s going anywhere anyway,” said Thurman.
In honor of the movie’s 15-year anniversary, the SIFF Cinema will be playing Twilight on Nov. 17 and 18.
The city also hosts a festival every year for Twilight fans. It’s set for Sept. 12-15, 2024, the closest weekend to Bella’s birthday. They bring in actors from the movie for the festival every year and this year, are hoping Taylor Lautner will agree to attend.
