Where Is Virgin River Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

It's almost hard to believe that "Virgin River" is among the longest-running series on Netflix, having aired six seasons and been renewed for a seventh, which is likely arriving sometime later this calendar year. But while it may not be the flashiest show that the famed streamer airs, "Virgin River" is a stalwart romantic drama, adapted from the novels by author Robyn Carr. It offers fans plenty of soap-opera-style drama, focused on a vast ensemble beyond leading lady Mel Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) and her now-husband Jack Sheridan (Martin Henderson). From the start, the series has had plenty of storylines separate from how Mel and Jack meet and fall in love. But even if the subplots themselves don't always hit home, "Virgin River" is nothing short of a feast for the eyes when it comes to the show's locations.

If you've watched every episode, you know that this show loves to throw in hypnotically compelling interstitial and establishing shots of the mountainous vistas purportedly of the eponymous Northern California town where the story takes place. Carr has already confirmed that the namesake town isn't real, but that doesn't mean that fans of the show can't imagine it to be so. More importantly, it doesn't mean that fans can't try and flock to the places where this Netflix drama is filmed. 

But there's an interesting twist here if you're an American fan of the series. It's not just that Virgin River isn't a real place, or that you'd have to head up north to find its locations. If you want to visit the locations where this show is filmed, you'd better have your passport. Let's dig in.

The initial story setup for "Virgin River" was fairly straightforward, as Mel fled the big city of Los Angeles to the eponymous small town in Northern California — in part to escape past demons and trauma and in part to start a new job as a nurse practitioner for the gruff local Doc (Tim Matheson). Once in town, Mel gradually falls not only for Jack, a charming but haunted Iraq War veteran with a few skeletons in his closet, but for the town itself, as personified by Doc, his delightfully meddlesome wife and town mayor Hope (Annette O'Toole), Jack's reliable friend Preacher (Colin Lawrence), and a host of other colorful characters. Over the course of six seasons, Mel has gone from being new in town to Jack's devoted but fiercely independent wife, while Jack continues to tend bar, Doc grapples with aging out of being a doctor, and other twists and turns inevitably come down the pike. But one of the most alluring aspects of the show is its location. Each episode's title sequence is a long, slow shot of some part of the forests near the eponymous town, and yet, in reality, it's not even a glimpse of the United States.

That's right — it's not just that Virgin River isn't real. The show's key setting isn't even filmed in California, as beautiful as the vistas may appear. If you're an eagle-eyed viewer of television, you may have guessed as much about the show's locations based on the number of Canadian actors in the show's ensemble, but it's true: "Virgin River" is filmed entirely in British Columbia, specifically in the Vancouver area. Of course, this is far from the only title you can find filming in this part of the world. The show's location scout, W. Robert "Fluffy" Millar, has worked on plenty of other productions, such as the "Fifty Shades of Grey" film series, that also filmed in Vancouver. Because "Virgin River" is as much about its locations as it is about the people within those locales, some of the key settings — even those shot on soundstages or only partially outside — have been the source of both wonder ... and a bit of natural terror.

When Millar spoke to Netflix's Tudum site about the location spotting he and his team did he called out a few key locations, like Jack's Bar, which serves as a central spot for most of the show's cast. Though the exterior of the bar is mostly real (it's got a different name, of course) and is located "near the largest concentration of bald eagles in the world," Millar notes that the interior is shot on a soundstage and suggests a second floor to the building that doesn't exist in real life. But for the most impassioned fans of the show, yes, you can visit the bar as long as you prepare yourself for a different name. Head off to Brackendale, off the river in Squamish, British Columbia, and look for the Watershed Grill.

Any long-running show has regular filming locations, whether they're on a soundstage or not, and "Virgin River" is no different. One such location would be Mel's cabin. Although the character eventually moved in with Jack (perhaps after a longer period of time than some fans would have expected or liked), she has her own cabin when the series begins. While the interior, as Millar noted, is filmed on a soundstage, the production team went to the trouble of having expansive photographic backdrops serving as the exterior backgrounds, ensuring that what the audience sees looks an awful lot like what is truly outside the windows of the real cabin that's glimpsed in exterior shots. However, when the show was filming its fifth season, Millar learned that the District of North Vancouver had "received a heritage grant to refurbish the cabin, because it's actually sinking."

Fans of "Virgin River" know that the series has never been shy about using Mother Nature as a plot point; a recent story centered around a devastating rock slide, and there was also an extensive arc about a tragic and monstrous wildfire. But the show hasn't yet ventured into showcasing what happens when or if one of the characters' houses sinks into the ground. Millar notes that the biggest impact in the fifth season was that the production team simply couldn't film at the cabinwhile the city refurbished it to ensure its longevity. But natural logistics have come in the way of some key scenes and sequences.

Millar also calls out a season-three episode of the show focused on the Lumberjack Games, a large event meant to bring the town together with some fun and energetic activities. Although the area where the episode was filmed, Grouse Mountain, is a locale where real-life games like these (including axe-throwing and log rolling) take place regularly, the third season was being produced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the production team had to rely upon the real-life team that puts on these games, while dealing with a nasty windstorm and snow that tampered with their efforts to carefully bring pieces of the set to the specific parts of the mountain where the episode was going to be filmed. It's clearly a tough job filming a show like "Virgin River," which relies so heavily on an actual natural locale as much as indoor sets.

The local parks and rivers of British Columbia have only served to add to the visual depth and beauty of "Virgin River." In the Tudum interview, Millar spotlights another season 3 episode based on the specific beauty of one of its locations. The episode finds Jack in a fairly low place, and he's joined by his fellow ex-Marines for some outdoor adventures, including an intense bit of kayaking. There's no green screen here; the scenes in question were filmed near a place called House Rock, and Millar himself nearly got lost in the heavily forested area while attempting to scout specific spots where the crew could film. 

The amount of distinctive, quaint, and gorgeous spots in British Columbia that the production team for "Virgin River" have leveraged across six seasons of drama and quiet introspection have helped the show stand out among the many on Netflix. You could easily go on a big trip to visit its many specific locations, across parks, forests, and real-life small towns. Even for fans of the show who may not know the extensive book series well, there's something truly fascinating and compelling about the use of real exterior locations, despite the fact that those locations are nowhere near the in-show setting of Northern California. It's a small price to pay for the amount of beautiful shots of the great outdoors, enough to make you understand why Mel Monroe would eschew the fast pace of Los Angeles in favor of small-town charm. As "Virgin River" approaches its seventh season, we can hope that the new episodes will show off new parts of Vancouver (and that Netflix won't ever remove the show, as has happened with other titles in the past), and offer us more breathtaking natural beauty.