Oak Alley Foundation
Overnight cottages at Oak Alley
Vacherie, Louisiana
Cottages on the grounds, alongside local hotels, inns and B&Bs the foundation lists. The first episode’s tree scene was shot in a remote part of the property.
See where to stay
▶ PLAY · SP
True Detective
Carcosa, 2012: Fort Macomb (Carcosa). Season one is told on tape, from 2012, about 1995. Four seasons later the show has come round to a fort east of New Orleans, a town of a hundred people, an Ozark ridge and an Icelandic fishing town.
Source on the tapes
1995 · 2002 · 2012
Turn the
flat circle.
Season one moves between 1995, 2002 and 2012. Turn the ring: the year under the notch shows where it was filmed. Keep turning and it comes round again.
Sources on the three years
1995. Oak Alley Plantation.
3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie
Oak Alley Plantation
The discovery under a lone tree in a field that opens the first episode was filmed in a remote section of Oak Alley’s property. The house itself does not appear in episode one. Oak Alley is open daily from 8.30am to 4.45pm, and its research pages include a database of the people enslaved there.
Open daily, 8.30am to 4.45pm, with timed tickets from the foundation. The scene was shot in a remote part of the grounds, away from the famous alley.
Sources
Viator · Ad / affiliate
Oak Alley and River Road tours
Vacherie, from New Orleans
Live marketplace results for tours from New Orleans to Oak Alley. Not True Detective tours; check each itinerary.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursIdle hands
One little man
per season.
Rust Cohle makes little figures out of cut-up beer cans. Crush, tear, fold and stand one for each season, and it shows you where that season was made.
Source on the cans
Season one2014
Season two2015
Season three2019
Night Country2024
Season one: a full can. Crush it.
Finish the can to see the place.
Sources on the seasons
Episode four · one shot
Six minutes,
no cut.
The long take was shot on a real housing complex, set in Texas, filmed in Louisiana. It took weeks to get permission and seven goes with the cameras rolling. Roll it, move the camera on, and try not to cut.
TAKE 1of 7Standby
Take 1. Waiting to roll.
Bridge City, on the West Bank
The housing complex of the long take
The six-minute single take in episode four, set in Beaumont, Texas, was filmed at a housing complex in Bridge City, Louisiana, in seven takes. Permission to film there took weeks. The sequence was run seven times with cameras rolling, and the version that aired is a true single take; the camera rode a crane over the fence.
People’s homes. Named here, never pinned, and not a place to go looking.
Sources
Main title
People full
of country.
The opening titles put the land inside the characters. Choose a landscape, choose a head, and slide the country through it.
Source on the titles
Oak Alley Plantation, inside a head-on silhouette.
3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie
Oak Alley Plantation
The discovery under a lone tree in a field that opens the first episode was filmed in a remote section of Oak Alley’s property. The house itself does not appear in episode one. Oak Alley is open daily from 8.30am to 4.45pm, and its research pages include a database of the people enslaved there.
Open daily, 8.30am to 4.45pm, with timed tickets from the foundation. The scene was shot in a remote part of the grounds, away from the famous alley.
Sources
Not on the map: Dora Lange’s mother’s house, Des Allemands. The house of Dora Lange’s mother, in Des Allemands, was used almost as it was found.
Season three · the Ozarks
Hold two
in mind.
Season three runs across three time periods in Northwest Arkansas. Remember a place and it comes clear; remember a third and the first one fogs over.
Holding Devil’s Den State Park (Yellow Rock).
11333 West Arkansas Hwy. 74, West Fork
Devil’s Den State Park (Yellow Rock)
Devil’s Den is featured prominently in season three’s first episode, with several shots along the Yellow Rock Trail. KNWA lists the Yellow Rock lookout among the season’s locations. The Yellow Rock Trail is a moderately difficult three-mile walk climbing 300 feet, past cedar glades, caves and the park’s first Civilian Conservation Corps structure.
Visitor centre open daily 8am–5pm, closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; cabins and campground open all year. Yellow Rock is a three-mile trail.
Sources
25½ N Block Ave, Fayetteville
Hugo’s, off the square
Hugo’s, on Block Avenue right off the historic square, is a location in season three’s second episode. On the square, KNWA also spotted the Chancellor Hotel. Hugo’s has been open since 1977, in a basement.
Monday to Saturday, 11am–10pm; closed Sundays. It is down in a basement just off the historic square.
Sources
Old Main, North Campus Drive, Fayetteville
Old Main lawn, University of Arkansas
On the University of Arkansas campus, season three filmed on the Old Main lawn and at Reid Hall. The season takes place in the Ozarks across three different time periods.
A public campus. Walk the lawn in front of the twin towers.
Sources
More from the Ozarks
Arkansas State Parks
Devil’s Den cabins
West Fork, Arkansas
Eighteen cabins with kitchens and fireplaces, many built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, plus nine camper cabins, open all year in the park season three filmed.
Check cabinsNight Country · Ennis, Alaska
Drill down
to Alaska.
Ennis is Alaska on screen and Iceland underneath. Pull the core up a metre at a time.
0–1 m: Dalvík.
Dalvíkurbyggð, Eyjafjörður, North Iceland
Dalvík (Ennis)
Dalvík, a fishing village on Iceland’s north coast, is one of the places Night Country filmed. Its former post office became the Ennis police station and a former fisherman’s shed the liquor store; the petrol station and roads round town were used too. Overhead shots of a slow, grim convoy through Ennis were filmed over Dalvík.
A working fishing town on Eyjafjörður; Akureyri, where the northern crew stayed, is about 25 minutes away.
Sources
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Tours from Akureyri and Dalvík
Eyjafjörður, North Iceland
Live marketplace results for Eyjafjörður and North Iceland tours. None is about the show.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursRound
again.
10 places to visit, from a ring of brick on Chef Menteur Pass to a fishing town under Icelandic snow. Two homes stay off the map.
Sources
Where it is now
10 places you can visit, in Louisiana, Vernon, Northwest Arkansas and Iceland. A family home in Des Allemands and the housing complex of the long take are named on this page and pinned nowhere.
Pins mark public places; private homes are named but not pinned.
General reference · Restricted access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Closed to the public: the state owns the ruin and treats it as unsafe. Look from the water; Fort Pike, nearby, is the fort you can learn about.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Corps of Engineers land, open for fishing, crawfishing, camping and wildlife watching as long as you keep clear of the flood works. The church was a set.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Open daily, 8.30am to 4.45pm, with timed tickets from the foundation. The scene was shot in a remote part of the grounds, away from the famous alley.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Start at Adventure Point in Sulphur, then drive south: more than 100 miles of roads through the wetlands to the Gulf beaches.
Fort Macomb from the air, November 2019. NOLADG · CC BY-SA 4.0 Chef Menteur Pass, Eastern New Orleans
Fort Macomb (Carcosa)
Fort Macomb, east of New Orleans, is where Carcosa was filmed. It is closed to the public.
Closed to the public: the state owns the ruin and treats it as unsafe. Look from the water; Fort Pike, nearby, is the fort you can learn about.
Sources
The Bonnet Carré Spillway structure, January 2016. Louisiana Sea Grant · CC BY 2.0 River Road, Norco, St. Charles Parish
Bonnet Carré Spillway
The burnt-out church of episode two was built for the show in a field behind the spillway’s levee, with refineries and raised train tracks in view.
Corps of Engineers land, open for fishing, crawfishing, camping and wildlife watching as long as you keep clear of the flood works. The church was a set.
Sources
Live oaks at Oak Alley, February 2023. Jeff Ruane · CC BY 2.0 3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie
Oak Alley Plantation
The discovery under a lone tree in a field that opens the first episode was filmed in a remote section of Oak Alley’s property.
Open daily, 8.30am to 4.45pm, with timed tickets from the foundation. The scene was shot in a remote part of the grounds, away from the famous alley.
Sources
The Creole Nature Trail at Holly Beach, January 2012. Kimble Young · CC BY-SA 2.0 Adventure Point, 2740 Ruth Street, Sulphur, near Lake Charles
Creole Nature Trail
In the story, the detectives drive the Creole Nature Trail near Lake Charles looking for the Yellow King.
Start at Adventure Point in Sulphur, then drive south: more than 100 miles of roads through the wetlands to the Gulf beaches.
Sources
Stay
Cabins and cottages.
A 1930s cabin in the Ozark park season three filmed, or a cottage on the River Road grounds where season one began.
Arkansas State Parks
Devil’s Den cabins
West Fork, Arkansas
Eighteen cabins with kitchens and fireplaces, many built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, plus nine camper cabins, open all year in the park season three filmed.
Check cabinsOak Alley Foundation
Overnight cottages at Oak Alley
Vacherie, Louisiana
Cottages on the grounds, alongside local hotels, inns and B&Bs the foundation lists. The first episode’s tree scene was shot in a remote part of the property.
See where to stayGo
The River Road and the north.
Marketplace tours from New Orleans to Oak Alley, and round Eyjafjörður. Neither is a True Detective tour.
Viator · Ad / affiliate
Oak Alley and River Road tours
Vacherie, from New Orleans
Live marketplace results for tours from New Orleans to Oak Alley. Not True Detective tours; check each itinerary.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursViator · Ad / affiliate
Tours from Akureyri and Dalvík
Eyjafjörður, North Iceland
Live marketplace results for Eyjafjörður and North Iceland tours. None is about the show.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWhat’s on
Tall tales at Devil’s Den.
A free autumn evening in the park, with pumpkins and stargazing. Not about the show.
Checking current event dates…
Take it home
A novel, old stories, the songs.
Pizzolatto’s Gulf Coast novel, Robert W. Chambers’s stories, and the soundtrack on vinyl.
Bookshop.org UK · Ad / affiliate
Galveston
Nic Pizzolatto
Pizzolatto’s first novel, a Gulf Coast crime story; Scribner paperback, 2011.
Find the book
Bookshop.org UK · Ad / affiliate
The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories
Robert W. Chambers
Chambers’s 1890s stories in a Dover edition, 2004.
Find the book
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True Detective: Music From the HBO Series
Various artists · 2×LP, 2015
The series soundtrack on double vinyl.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyDates, prices, rooms and stock change: confirm with the provider before you travel or buy. A stay or tour is described as a filming location only where the card says so.
The whole record
Every place and moment behind this page, with sources.
12 of 12 places · 12 of 12 Moments
Fort Macomb (Carcosa)
Chef Menteur Pass, Eastern New Orleans
Carcosa
The final chase through a fort turned into a maze.
Bonnet Carré Spillway
River Road, Norco, St. Charles Parish
The burnt church
A church built and burned behind a levee, refineries on the skyline.
Oak Alley Plantation
3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie
The tree in the field
The 1995 case begins under a lone tree in open country.
Creole Nature Trail
Adventure Point, 2740 Ruth Street, Sulphur, near Lake Charles
The road south
The detectives drive the wetlands south of Lake Charles.
Dora Lange’s mother’s house
Des Allemands
The mother’s house
A house used almost as found.
The housing complex of the long take
Bridge City, on the West Bank
The long take
Six minutes, one shot, seven attempts.
Vernon City Hall (Vinci)
Vernon, Los Angeles County
Vinci
An industrial city of about a hundred people plays itself, renamed.
Devil’s Den State Park (Yellow Rock)
11333 West Arkansas Hwy. 74, West Fork
Yellow Rock
The Ozark woods of the first episode.
Hugo’s, off the square
25½ N Block Ave, Fayetteville
Downstairs at Hugo’s
A basement bar off the square.
Old Main lawn, University of Arkansas
Old Main, North Campus Drive, Fayetteville
Old Main
Filming on the university lawn.
Dalvík (Ennis)
Dalvíkurbyggð, Eyjafjörður, North Iceland
Ennis, north
The police station, the liquor store and the roads out of town.
The old base at Keflavík (Ásbrú)
Ásbrú, Reykjanesbær, Reykjanes peninsula
Ennis, south
Wide streets on an old base, with snow trucked in.