Virgin River

Is ‘Virgin River’ a Real Place? Show’s Filming Location and Town Explained

Posted on by Rinio

Virgin River has made fans fall in love with a small town in California — but is it a real place?

Based on the book series written by Robyn Carr, Virgin River centers around the lives of residents living in a small town in Northern California, including Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and her love interest, Jack (Martin Henderson). The series also stars Colin Lawrence, Annette O’Toole, Tim Matheson, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Sarah Dugdale, Zibby Allen, Marco Grazzini, Mark Ghanimé and Kai Bradbury.

After many ups and downs — including a miscarriage in season 5 — Jack and Mel finally ended season 6 as husband and wife. Elsewhere, exes Brie (Zibby Allen) and Brady (Ben Hollingsworth) slept together before Brie told her boyfriend, Mike (Marco Grazzini), about her affair with Brady, which made him propose to her.

The drama at the center of the show is all set in Virgin Rive

Most of the filming for the hit Netflix show took place in Vancouver and other parts of British Columbia. According to Vancouver’s tourism website, many scenes were filmed in Snug Cove in Bowen Island, which “anchors the show as the fictional town of Virgin River.”

Where Are Virgin River’s Hotspots Located Throughout Vancouver?

Alexandra Breckenridge as Mel Monroe. Ricardo Hubbs/NetflixMel’s cabin is largely set in a soundstage but is based on the home of the caretaker of Murdo Frazer Park, which is located in North Vancouver. Jack’s Bar, meanwhile, is a restaurant on the river in Squamish called the Watershed Grill that is used for exterior shots. Vernon Mullins’ family practice clinic is a Victorian home located on First Street in New Westminster.

Most of the scenes involving Paige’s Bakeaway food truck were filmed at Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park and Deer Lake Park. As for Hope McCrea’s home, the property is a historic residence located at Deer Lake Drive, Burnaby.

How Does Filming Coordination Work on the Show?

COURTESY OF NETFLIXLocation manager and scout W. Robert “Fluffy” Millar spoke to Tudum in 2024 about bringing Virgin River to life, saying, “I’m always trying to one-up each episode, always trying to find a prettier, more stunning vista, or another easily accessible, dense forest, and it’s quite a blessing to be doing a show like this in British Columbia. We always coordinate with the First Nations themselves. The Squamish Nation has been really supportive of our show because we do a lot of filming on First Nations land.”

Have There Been Complications Over the Years?

Courtesy of Netflix“We did the Lumberjack Games episode in season 3 at Grouse Mountain. It was right during COVID, so the ski mountains were shut down [to the public]. There are actually logger sports and lumberjack games held in this area, but those were also [shut] down because of COVID,” Millar explained. “Luckily the producer of those [local] lumberjack games lives in the interior of British Columbia. He brought his team up — the kind of stunt people who know all about log rolling and ax throwing and everything. We decided to use gondolas and shipped [all the equipment] up the mountains in the gondolas from the bottom of the hill.”

He continued: “Of course, we had a horrible windstorm that blew over a bunch of our sets on the long weekend before filming. We had to get the team up there first thing in the morning after Canadian Thanksgiving to rebuild a bunch of the locations. We repaired stuff as we worked our way around the mountain. And then the weekend before we were coming in to wrap all the cable and all the grip gear and all the locations gear and everything. They had a massive dump of snowfall that crushed all of our sets and all of our equipment.”