Dylan Weston didn’t really want to watch the Wilmington-shot TV series One Tree Hill.
His wife, Adrienne, convinced him to give it a whirl, and after two episodes, he was hooked.
The couple traveled to Wilmington about five years ago for the sole purpose of visiting the backgrounds used in the drama, which aired from 2003 to 2012. And when they traveled to Topsail Island this summer, they drove the 40 miles to Wilmington to see some of the settings again and catch the ones they missed last time.
On July 12, they stopped by the Riverwalk to visit a tiny wooden picnic table and benches covered in names written in marker and pen. Located at the end of Dock Street, the little TV show landmark is known as the “Naley Bench,” which for fans of One Tree Hill means the location where Nathan gave Haley a Cracker Jack bracelet on the show. Based in a fictional North Carolina town, One Tree Hill follows Nathan (played by James Lafferty) and his half-brother Lucas (played by Chad Michael Murray) as they compete on the basketball court and in their personal lives.
“It’s the only show I’ve ever watched that actually made me feel like doing something. There’s just so much going on … you get inspired … they all chase after the things they want,” Dylan Weston said.
The Westons are set-jetters (a moniker used widely in the travel industry to categorize people who visit places where productions are filmed), and they weren’t the only ones at the Naley Bench on July 12. Virginia resident Melanie Bragg and her family, who were staying at Carolina Beach, examined and took pictures of the bench.
“I told my husband, I was like, ‘I gotta go to Wilmington,’” said Bragg, who is a fan of One Tree Hill and another Wilmington-filmed drama, Dawson’s Creek.
Set-jetting has been on the rise in recent years, according to officials with the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“While the ‘set-jetting’ trend has recently been coined and noted in national studies as a trend, traveling to visit film/TV locations is a trend the CVB has observed in Wilmington since the early days of Dawson’s Creek, when fans of the show arrived in droves to visit show locations, followed by fans of One Tree Hill and, more recently, The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
In addition to the three series, overall visitor interest in production locations remains strong, they said.
“According to our visitor information specialists, while many visitors are interested in specific films and shows (especially One Tree Hill), others are generally interested in guided and self-guided film/TV-related tours to learn about Wilmington-made productions,” the email stated.
CVB officials said visitors frequently ask them about movie studio tours “and are disappointed to learn that they are no longer available.”
The good news, they say, is that a walking tour – Wilmywood Movie & TV Location Walk – has been relaunched to the public and is available Wednesday and Saturday mornings.
While they were still offered privately, the public tours restarted this year, and actress Tamora Sneed is the tour guide.
“They’ve been going great,” Sneed said of the 90-minute tours. “They’ve been even selling better than I feel like they used to."
The Naley Bench is one of 35 stops on the downtown Wilmington tour, which starts at the base of Market Street by the Cape Fear River.
Another big stop, Sneed said, is the alleyway between Front and Water streets where parts of the film The Crow were set. Filming for The Crow, the story of a man who comes back from the grave to avenge his and his wife’s murder, ended in a real-life tragedy. The movie’s star, Brandon Lee, died March 30, 1993, in a prop gun accident on the set.
Wilmington’s film history attracts fans from inside and outside the U.S.
“We get a fan base from all over. The Convention and Visitors Bureau certainly helps out with that and directs them to the right places,” Sneed said. “A lot of people from Europe are still very heavily interested and invested in Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill. And when they get here, they find out all these other things that have filmed here, and they’re just blown away with the list that we have between movies and TV shows.”
In the spring of 2023, the local CVB and Visit NC co-hosted a familiarization tour (FAM) for journalists from high-profile publications that included People and Us Weekly magazines. According to Visit NC, the Coastal Film FAM resulted in more than 15 articles across six national publications.
Productions outside downtown Wilmington and the Cinespace studios on North 23rd Street have also inspired tours.
In 2020, Pender County Tourism announced the launch of the Hometown Hollywood Film Tour in downtown Burgaw, a walking tour based on film and TV locations throughout the town. The 44-minute, 12-stop tour is available through the PocketSights app. Productions filmed in Burgaw include I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) and Tammy (2014), to name a few.
In Brunswick County, the city of Southport has created a map (cityofsouthport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Film-map.pdf) to help visitors find locations of films such as Safe Haven and A Walk to Remember.
The spotlight that films and TV shows shine on the Cape Fear region result in visitor spending, but they can also lead to more permanent impacts.
Johnny Griffin, director of the Wilmington Regional Film Commission, said “I met someone recently at a bank here in town doing business, and after we talked for a while, they sort of shyly admitted that ‘I actually moved here because of One Tree Hill.’”
