By dint of being everywhere, Springfield has ended up spilling off the screen. A real Springfield claims paternity of the name, a professional baseball team carries that of the Isotopes, a dozen North American convenience stores were repainted as Kwik-E-Marts, and a house strictly identical to the Simpsons' was built in the Nevada desert. Here is the real, verifiable file on the most fictional setting on television.
Springfield, Oregon
The model acknowledged in 2012
In April 2012, Matt Groening explained to Smithsonian magazine that the show's Springfield owes its name to Springfield, Oregon, right next to Portland where he grew up: as a child, he thought the series Father Knows Best was set there. He corrected himself shortly afterwards, to TV Guide: the show's town was never meant to be in a real state, and only the name was borrowed.
The official mural of 2014
Oregon pays tribute
On 25 August 2014, the town of Springfield, Oregon, unveiled an official mural devoted to the family, on a building in the town centre. It was designed by Julius Preite, a veteran of the show, and painted by a collective of local artists. Yeardley Smith, the original voice of Lisa, was present and left her handprints in the cement.
The state that is never named
The gag that has held since 1989
The show has never said which state Springfield is in, and the clues sown over the seasons are contradictory enough that no state holds up. That vagueness is not a writer's oversight: it is the condition for any American viewer to be able to recognise their own town in the Simpsons'.
→ Which state is Springfield in?
The four neighbouring states
Ohio, Nevada, Maine, Kentucky
In The Simpsons Movie (2007), Ned Flanders takes Bart to the top of a mountain and points out the four states Springfield borders: Ohio, Nevada, Maine and Kentucky. In reality, only Ohio and Kentucky are neighbours, and the four are scattered from one end of the country to the other. That is the whole joke.
The Kwik-E-Marts of 2007
Twelve convenience stores repainted
In July 2007, for the film's release, 7-Eleven turned eleven of its American stores and one Canadian store into real Kwik-E-Marts. The shelves filled with KrustyO's cereal and Buzz Cola, the Slurpees became Squishees. The operation lasted a month, then the signs went back to being perfectly ordinary 7-Elevens.
The Albuquerque Isotopes
When fiction relocates for real
In "Hungry, Hungry Homer" (season 12, 4 March 2001), the Springfield Isotopes try to move to Albuquerque. Two years later, a baseball franchise did settle there for good and let the readers of the Albuquerque Tribune name it: the name Isotopes won comfortably, with 67% of the roughly 120,000 votes cast.
The Henderson house, Nevada
742 Evergreen Terrace in bricks and mortar
In 1997, Pepsi, Fox and the builder Kaufman and Broad built a replica of the house in Henderson, Nevada: 49 days of construction, around 120,000 dollars, four bedrooms and fifteen hundred props taken from the show. The competition drew fifteen million entries. The winner, Barbara Howard, preferred the 75,000 dollars in cash provided for in the rules. More than 30,000 curious visitors have been through it.
Universal's Springfield district
A street you can actually walk down
From 2013, Universal built a walkable Springfield district around The Simpsons Ride, in Florida and then in California: Moe's Tavern, a Krusty Burger, the Lard Lad statue, the Duff brewery and a spinning ride named Kang & Kodos' Twirl 'n' Hurl. The show's setting became a street where you can order a Duff at the counter.
The plant and its false model
Trojan had nothing to do with it
It was long claimed that the Springfield plant was modelled on Trojan, in Oregon, whose cooling towers resembled those in the show. When Trojan was demolished, the production's press officer denied it: the design is deliberately generic and refers to no real installation in the country.
The name Springfield
The most ordinary place name in America
The choice of name is no accident: Groening explained that Springfield was one of the most common town names in the United States, and that he hoped everyone would think they recognised their own. The result: the most famous town on American television belongs to nobody, and therefore to everybody.
THE MOST FAMOUS ADDRESS ON THE SMALL SCREEN
