The Andy Griffith Show Filming Locations - Finding Town of Mayberry / Former Studio Backlot Tour

welcome everyone adam the woo here have my clipboard full of itemized screen captures today's adventure i will be roaming around to three different locations the first starting here on kohanga you see the street sign located right up there and there is a studio just across the way here on this cross street that used to house the interior sets of the andy griffith show i will show this and then i will make my way to all the exterior spots or at least as many as i can procure and figure out based on watching from the first episode all the way through season five which is when don knotts left the show he came back as a couple guest appearances but season one through five are arguably the best of the entire series i have put i put a lot of time into watching researching and we'll see if it we'll see if it helps with the production of this episode i'm inviting you to join me shall you what is now red studios used to be owned by desi lou productions all the interiors were inside this property as well as some a few exteriors walking through there in the later years there was a hollywood episode that took place them walking through these gates but also gomer pyle before the spin-off and there is that iconic sign up there on top of the mountain gotta love that hollywood trickery it was not in north carolina nope it was all filmed in los angeles they pulled a wool over our eyes now i'm not gonna be able to get on site but i'm walking around the back here to lillian way you can see it there kind of protruding out of the shade into the sun there is the sign the 800 north block and if you follow around this corner some other television history i don't want to i don't want to dive into any other any other shows but it should be noted these were some of the audience doors right down there where i love lucy where guests would would kind of line up to go in and watch the show take place a little side note in fact i do believe that this bracket right up here is where the signage from way back then used to kind of kind of dangle another speaker up there but i digress across the way there is where the exteriors of thelma lew's house would have sat it's been they've been torn down they were not sets they were real homes that they would use they would utilize they would rent there were two or three and a couple different episodes of sat right there in fact i think there might even be some telephone poles in the background we could match up for a brief moment you see the address 830 830 here on lillian way let me just if i flip this around you can see a wider angle now the house is gone however you'll see up here there is a pole there and a pole there this one looks the same this has been the bottom portion has been removed but both of those poles are still up there in the distance meaning that 830 was right about there and there was another home that they utilized here and another one off to its other side but thelma loose her driveway would have been right around here a little bit of a closer angle there on the one pole that is prominent and the other pole there just past the newer one that has been created typed in the address to maps and it shows right there that little blue dot is where i'm standing the home would have been here driveway there and barney came to visit and those poles right there same angle if you recall one punch opie where they break the light that that pole was right here and of course andy pulls up and then later later on opie has to confront his bully right there now over here what is now stage three right inside this very structure is where all uh every single episode of the interiors took place for a while this place kind of set desolate and and empty it's gone through a different couple different incarnations different studios have taken place but there are interviews with andy saying how it was in such bad shape that between scenes the rain would when rainy days would pour down through the roof line here it's now been converted into a couple different sound stages but they would just walk right out of this south gate and then turn to these homes here not a long commute at all to thelma loose it's kind of tough to wrap your head around just think of any moments from the show that are your favorites you know some most of them were right inside of that that domed building that sound stage just think of any of those from one of you know one of the most popular television shows of all time right inside there i was approached by a gentleman at the end of the block who's he was watching over the area kind of shared some of the info with him as well he didn't even realize you know the houses that had been taken down on the other side so that pretty much that's pretty much the end of showing the interior areas now it's time to really get into the exteriors got a little traveling so not too far but a little traveling even though it's only about eight miles gonna take about a half hour give or take let's get moving i totally agree big the foot it is very scenic through here these windy roads we're almost there in some ways it doesn't even feel like we're in the greater los angeles area anymore off the beaten path oh got a few bumps in the pavement there [Music] upper franklin canyon reservoir listen closely you can hear some water right down there and go down these steps follow this pathway around to something very notable the intro to every single show right around this corner straight ahead this very pathway headed in this direction is where opie and andy director would have said action walked along this path just about where that picnic table is over there that's where opie threw the rock into the water pretty dang cool huh quite a bit of foliage growth over the years and decades can't really see down into the waterway like you could back then a couple of different occasions they utilize this in the early years and then the last couple of seasons as well short sweet to the point nice theme song whistled out everyone knows the tune in your head right now you're hearing it there's a pretty famous photograph of behind the scenes angle where they have the the camera camera crew right here and there was a big stump right about there and the two cast members right there and it's not just that this area was used pretty much for any sort of fishing scene or if any of the escapees were kind of on the run the sheriff and deputy would always come out here to look for them i'm gonna try to match up some of those those spots now if you take this incline path up these stairs fairly certain something took place right up here next to these poles as a good frame of reference here's these wood pieces that make up the railing here are kind of panned back you can see they're looking over towards the lake for the guy in the boat that's paddling across now this railing seems to be pretty dated i don't think that is the one in frame i think it's more around this angle and the railing on the other side appears to be a little newer so you can see really you can see the age and the wear on these pieces in fact there's even some cobwebs and some newer bolts but right right about there there's don knotts looking for their man from here you wouldn't even realize there's a lake down there they eventually caught him in the end and standing right here looking back the other direction they were at the base of a hill and that hill is that slight descent which means their cruiser was there the three of them standing right there next to it i kind of backtracked just a bit around this item the rock skipping section is right over there and look at the formation of the hillside of the mountains now obviously grown up quite a bit but there it is the same type of angle downward and there he is going across the water doing some paddling i'll get a little closer i'm going to walk i'll walk through the shrubs to get to the what is now the shoreline this would have all been submerged but not at the current time frame i can hear some some ripples right right over there that's as far as i can go however now if i could go back in time i would be pegged in the noggin by opie's pebble she would have been right there punk you hear the water the water's right there under those weeds very very grown over around the shoreline just a bit was over there but now get a better perspective here of the main reservoir well the upper reservoir the smaller of the two here in franklin canyon discovering that it is really difficult to line up trees and where the water level was 50 over 50 plus years after production but it was along this edge where andy needed to get away for a while had a little camping spot also where the boys were re-enacting robin hood and met the met the gentleman who was staying away from town right over in there also the picnic took place right on the corner down there gosh it is really tough though because you can't even really can't even go rooting around down in there too much a lot of those episodes you can see over here in the background you can kind of see the little formations and the dirt paths because the camera was usually set up that way looking across the water with these hills in the distance in the hills behind me during the meal when she decided to run for public office and andy disagreed she got up from the little picnic area and walked that direction wouldn't be able to do that now lots of lots of thorns and prickly items down there but off over there is that opposite opposite shore kind of scene there where time changes a lot of things i had been hoping to find these particular trees this was used on more than one occasion a number of episodes where they walked up they walked up a hill and you can kind of look over there the way that formation is is more or less that now trees could have been you know in a storm blown down a fire this seems to be the spot the only other option would be right over here there are a few but it seems to be a larger cluster i was also thinking that maybe they were up there on the side of that looking downward but there is nowhere to really get camera gear up there and if they were using that in a number of different different episodes in the series would be very difficult which means the road i am on here would have to be below where his campfire was looking looking that way that's a toughy here's another angle just a few feet away this is also a possibility look at the very hazy mountain lion there up at the top and that would be basically the same kind of angle but a lot of growth and a lot have fallen this is proving the point that things don't always stand the test of time when barney doesn't realize that andy isn't the criminal he jumps jumps on top of him and he can't once again using the the background there of the hillside and you can see some of the rocks down there as well but gosh could those be those rocks it's a good possibility but no real way of knowing this is the best possible guess right there such a funny scene and barney finally realizes he had caught andy and not the crook even though not everything can be pinpointed in this day and age it is nice to know that the same types of look at the branches there which also leads me to wonder maybe maybe that's the tree maybe the angle was a little more like that running along that section it's a good possibility there's even more of those even that might even be it after five plus decades of growth this concrete embankment was placed here in 1940 i was reading the placard back there and i have a nice little feeling that a spot up here still exists there was a worker doing some maintenance on the electrical poles and just so happened to also be climbing around in the trees and opie ended up befriending him went home and told his dad who did not understand he thought opie was not telling the truth was telling telling a little bit of a lie and then later in the episode he met the guy and everything worked out fine no longer a wooden pole that he was climbing up and down but it was in this very spot here replaced by a much more structural stability i will stand a little a little more of the test of time but here's where he was right up there the clear giveaway is the concrete on the right and the the wooden fence line over on the left hand side right there and even more of a definitive proof is the concrete here on this end you can see the height of it there and then the wooden fence down at the other end truck would have been parked in between the two with the former wooden pole which has been replaced right there so angle just about like that nice television history here even without all the tv nostalgia this is a very beautiful place to take a hike enjoy the day it's nice out here i have to admit i thought i was gonna have a little better luck with matching everything up it was a tough one but this we haven't reached the crescendo yet there's still one more location where most of the angles will be will be found it's a few well more than a few miles from here heading back to the car and going over there now yeah i know big the foot it's like you were saying earlier there's not a lot left and a big part of the challenge is finding something that is a remnant of sorts even though it's only 10 miles and take about 30 31 minutes pretty wild to thank you gotta cruise through beverly hills in reality to get to the mayberry spots arrived in culver city near the site in 1927 cecil b mills king of kings was built also used for the gates of king kong 1932 [Music] and the burning city of atlanta for gone with the wind and a number of other television commercials movies a variety of subject matters that i am not discussing but i am going to talk about what used to sit right there not only on that very corner but also through this entire area which are now all buildings used for other productions oh things have changed you might find it tough to believe but i am standing more or less give or take a few feet where the drugstore was the church building would have been right over there and the courthouse and floyd's barber shop right there [Music] even these papers are excited they're clapping they cannot believe their ears i have all the documentation here i have with the fine-tooth comb gone through the series tried to find any kind of hints to to show andy's house front porch prominently used and a number of other of residential homes would have been right over there it's on the corner of hayden place and high guerra street you wouldn't think by looking at it now that this was the main area it's almost set up the same way this parking lot if you're looking at it from an aerial view is more or less in the same pattern if we follow this along and kind of kind of get a good example of what mayberry where mayberry would have been on so many occasions they would be standing out right there on that little area you know in front of the barber shop or walking across the street to get ourselves a soda pop the back lot was maybe about 10 or 15 20 yards from where normal traffic was it's closed off to the general public there's that there's that hotel the four-story hotel which you rarely saw from the second level up that was used quite a bit to pay attention over here across the road are these angled buildings which are still here so if you follow that road next to those angled buildings it puts you right where i'm currently standing still here today which you can use as a good you know point of reference to figure out where we're at looking from this angle which would be behind where i'm standing facing the opposite direction take a peek up here you see the way this building is designed with the the corner structure that's right there which means if i circle back around this way you would be looking up over the back end of that iconic courthouse this was taken years later when the lot was starting to fall into disrepair not looking so good you can see not really a place for interiors in fact there was a a boat back there wedged behind where they would have walked in andy and barney would have just basically walked right in not to the cells but to that boat set and there's the church and right up here these lights well not these lights but these poles would have been there where hayden street now is so the angle would be just about like that looking down that was then this is now most likely not intentional but i love the fact that there is a barber shop set up right over there just on the outskirts of where floyd's used to be right there through those hedges just a gosh just a few feet away nearly impossible to pinpoint it down to the precise inch but more or less the new building back there is the same angle this is just my assumption take a look at this and the reason i am saying that it would have been just about you know give or take a few feet is based on that manhole you see down there now i am not an expert on you know when it comes to drainage of streets and construction however if we look from this based on where i was and the aerial views and the episode of the tnt goat what is seen down here you can faintly make out a manhole do are manholes easily moved like that even though pavement is repaved will a will an area like that leading down into the ground stay precise i'm thinking yes which by using that as coordinates follow this way would have gone towards the residential street if you looked over this way would have been the church building drug store right there all very close just short walk from each other currently standing right there kind of panned back out get it from this perspective i'm gonna walk up there we're gonna we're gonna do the walk this is so dang cool rarely seen but i did catch one little short one or two second frame of this that shows the back alley now this door would hypothetically be the little back area to the courthouse you know where barney would sleep sometimes and they had their little office in the back of the regular office and that would be just a few feet up that way i had to go to the far end back here just to be able to show this building over here and what i mean by that is was not really supposed to be shown but if you look up here past the hedge line the angle of that building right there is the same building there now i'm going to zoom in a little closer it is obstructed a little bit by the leaves and limbs but that's the same one that's just noticeable for a brief moment so that door would have been where this new door now is and remember the gazebo they were trying to fix that would have been placed right around in here gosh it was just so much activity through the course of the entire season that was just on the side over here and they also had a fake facade that kind of went around like a almost like a wooden partition and then a few other buildings that stretched along here that if you turn the corner and went off to the left there you would go down the residential street another example are the items on the outside of the back lot behind that partition i was mentioning now it has been repainted the the building has been repainted back there but as he approaches this here which is the courthouse which would have been in that spot let's walk over there and see if any of the design of that building in the in the distance match up upon closer inspection that's definitely it how it goes forward towards the road there and then back just a little bit and then this is kind of away from the other it's almost like it almost like that trying to describe it you know it's better just to show it makes more sense only seen for a moment brief moment the lights here on the cross streets obviously have been updated since then but you see this corner quite a few times an example here looking from the drugstore up and over you'll see the you see what was the old wooden style there they tried to obscure them with these facades you see these pop up on more than one occasion right here on hayden you have to use some heavy imagination i can picture it mostly because it's still fresh in my mind from years of watching it through my youth to my adulthood and then the last few months i went through all five seasons in order but yeah just right here you can just picture the cast of characters standing next to those pillars gosh and then right here was where they parked the cruiser all the time in this very very general vicinity right here and then between the two was floyd's barber shop which you know more or less right about there he could say that that was floyd's very rarely did they use any interiors looking outward onto the street they would have on the sound stage they would put up either paintings or cloth behind it photos of this area of what it looked like then but there was a couple of occasions for example this one right here where andy is looking out at barney as barney runs off with his arms extended like that that was that was not a that was not a painting behind there he really was andy really was looking out from this section across and those hills were obscured by some of the sets but we'll get to that a little bit later to be able to see some of them but that is that angle there so andy was standing right where i am looking across at the hotel there which was used on a few quite a few occasions it's so wild just waiting for barney to pull up in the car and park right here they were very they were very strict on who could park here yeah they were allowed to they gave many a tickets party gave plenty of tickets to people right here continuing on past the barber shop then you get into the meat market fruit stands there was like a a small alley that was through here that kind of went back it was used for quite a few different things and then that big hotel which was right there you could see them going in and out of the hotel which would have been you know just past these these flowers shrubs wow it's like reliving it all over again but seeing it through a totally different perspective secrets were not kept very well in town kind of leaked out that all that money was going to be rolling through so everyone showed up right in this very spot this might be a little of a stretch could or could not be but this corner which is now currently that corner pay attention to that building past the cross streets down there and you'll see this little item protruding up over the wooden fence line now keep in mind this was decades ago however that could possibly just go in just a little closer it could be one of those little pillars there and they have just extended them or it could just be an awful coincidence maybe had to do a lot of pausing rewinding back and forth in order you know to get the clues gotta get the clues in order they don't they don't happen often they just pop up when you're least expecting them you know you could just be episode after episode you're sitting there snacking on some stuff having a beverage eating some eating some food and it's like whoa what's that in the background rewind rewind nailed it it's very interesting because it's unintentional but if you follow the the new path line of buildings along how this etches out just a little is similar to how the theater was next to the hotel you can see how that kind of kind of angles in so you got theater there you got the hotel there you got floyds and the rest of them over there and then once you pass by the hotel and the theater the road continued going on which is one of the episodes where barney gets his man accidentally you know trips up on the on the criminal and became the town hero that was just right over there they didn't use that area a lot but you do see it you know on occasion it was right in here right about to right about to that point and then going back to the dumpster was that secondary section now this is just approximate but within a few feet the back side of the hotel is where the post office was sometimes it was moved around but the post office was shown on the right over on the opposite side not shown of this on the hotel which was there and one of my favorite moments i have a lot of favorite moments but barney escorts escorts the lady across goes down does a u-turn right here very dramatic like you turn u-turn u-turn u-turn pulls up to the post office right there when the darlings were siphoning water out of the fountain in front of the church building that's the section and there's the there's the item there in the middle of the road again and it was getting the attention of some of the young ladies new to town look down there just the little things i get excited about like a manhole cover that still exists gosh i hope that is the same one i mean unless they completely repaved everything shifted the manhole by just a foot or two either way there was there was a manhole in this side i mean it's got to be the same one has to be to show how close proximity everything was back to the goat and then residential this is just the next frame as they turn towards the residential area so right there leaving leaving the courthouse and residential street is right here they always said i'll give you a ride home i'll pick you up just wait a few minutes i'll come pick you up you can just walk to work in like two seconds up on top of that hill are a couple of towers you can faintly see them there kind of silhouetted top of that roofline there's father and son gosh it is windy out here there's the towers up there going around the the large building that was in the middle pretty much every angle of it was used the bus stop would have been seen there so if you did the 360 or i'm not gonna do a 360 we'll do like a almost a 360 around it you would have followed it around and then if you weren't around to this side which was shown on occasion at one point it was the franklin pharmacy and you would see that church right there as well you could just keep kind of circling around if you went around that corner then you would be looking back at the courthouse and down the residential street [Music] time to walk over to andy's it's a short commute a couple hundred yards maybe less 100 yards i'm not going to be able to get in to this section it's it's all locked up however here's a good landmark up here this makes it to be able to match up offset from this road a little short walk maybe to just about there angling that way i can't go past that fence but looking back the other direction from their porch you could see this building in the distance with a very unique indentation and some some pipes and whatnot on the side there a couple of times you were able to see this and this is their backyard fence now first indication would be that the building is that one right there and it has been remodeled just a little i'm not 100 sold on that first theory though now it very well could be could have been repurposed extended just a little and it looks to be a little more lengthy than the indentation shown there however i was looking on satellite view and there appeared back in the day to be another one of these types of buildings that was connected and adjacent to it that sat right here almost to where down there that little a little pull in where the sidewalk meets the driveway nonetheless andy's house was right there not right on the road it was maybe 10 feet back set from the road here's another look at what is under what is under appeal discretion depending on what your thought process is on that could be the one that's still standing but i'm thinking it was just over here a bit looking off the side of their porch so if this if you could just go back just a tiny bit would be where opie's garden was where up on the roof and he had the handyman who could do not right just making so many mistakes up in the window always looking out the window all that in here you know going back going back just a few feet and the haunted house episode would have been right there oh kind of where kind of where this little walkthrough is that's another classic episode great one seeing don knotts terrified well all of them were rather frightened in fact you can see those hills behind gomer that might be a i might be able to line that up too couldn't really make it happen this big parking structure was in the way but i did discover another angle looking back and you kind of see i'll just show you totally different time frame but that is that haunted house and that is andy's garage and there they are you know at a totally supposedly a totally different spot unbeknownst to his home or the haunted house but you'll notice the poles back there that is hayden street which are the poles off in the distance there at those cross streets so if you continue down that way take a left you're in mayberry there's those poles andy's house here haunted house here and those hills i gotta line that that that gomer shot up yeah this is about as close as i can get you see above his head there the formation i should be i should be back over that way that this works too he doesn't know what he's in for walking in there running parallel to this street was a berm it was an elevated you know dirt patch that went up and on the other side you know running just right along this road was a dirt stretch which they use for out of town scenes for example you know so the mayberry sets ended right around there this street here is that street so that's where i'm standing at the moment and there was that you know dirt pathway that they used actually use it a number of times more than more than a dozen throughout the series right along there and it went all the way up until the road kind of shifts off that way now the wooden poles on this side of the road shown there have been removed but you can see on the other side of the berm there are a couple of others so none on this side but there are the old-timey tele-wooden telephone poles still remaining that you can see you have to look very closely but they're over there when barney stands up to the guy selling the goods on the outskirts of towns he was on that dirt road and there's that berm and there's some of those some of those telephone poles right there you know so you got the the elevated area would have been here and there are some of those some of those poles right there but right there in the same frame as barney if you're ever re-watching and you see a dirt road on the outskirts of town in the andy griffith you know in mayberry it would have been right through here right there all of them were right here up ahead there the road veers off a little as shown there so if we go this way i have placed an x where wally's was which can't get over there either they're they're doing something on that far in there is a production taking place on this end of the property but all the way over there was where wally's was i really find this stuff very fascinating maybe part of the appeal is trying to discover you know what what no longer exists could be a big part of it for those not not up to the info it would be very easy to pass by this or heck even show up to work here not knowing that you've seen this you've seen these on so many other occasions a former former television life the theater the hotel there's like a i think it was like a vegetable stand a meat market meat shop i think it might even they may even sold suits at one point and then up to floyd's barber shop right up here which you never see floyd ever cut any hair he just talks and then they would go to another scene never see him snip any hair through the course of the series and there was another floyd before the one you might know oh yeah i went down the rabbit hole sat around and watched all the first five seasons floyd's i didn't make it through after barney left i need to continue on and watch the last few but i thought for the purpose of this oh man this right here was the courthouse think about that gosh so dang cool i love it in the grand scheme of things i don't know if if everyone will share my enthusiasm when it comes to yeah how exciting this this is pretty dang cool if you enjoy this particular episode give it a big thumbs up it lets me know you care if you're new here please subscribe by doing so helps keep you in the loop up future uploads here on the channel take it a step further ring that notification bell i'll see you in the next video let this sink in this took place right there this right there i'll see you in the next video the vlog is over what's that big the foot all of a sudden you're you're also craving some of aunt b's pickles yeah i know at first they're not too tasty but yeah we'll get used to them

Channel: TheDailyWoo

Views: 272,817

Rating: 4.9187393 out of 5

Keywords: andy griffith show, mayberry, andy griffith, courthouse, filming locations, filming, location, culver city, myers lake, intro, backlot, soundstage, desilu, tv show, classic, floyds barber shop, andys house, barney fife, los angeles, franklin canyon, hike, then and now, studios, tour, adam the woo, adam, the, woo, thedailywoo, adamthewoo, daily, behind the scenes, 40 acres backlot, 40 acres, overview, history, goat, episode, hollywood, thelma lou, house, opie, big the foot

Id: v7Mn_v7v2NQ

Length: 46min 25sec (2785 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020