Twilight Has Put Forks on the Map, But What Happens When It Falls Back Off?

Forks, Washington, purportedly the rainiest municipality in the continental U.S., has become a household name over the last few years due to the popularity of Stephenie Meyers's Twilight series and their movie adaptations. Today, it even scored a profile from the "Cultured Traveler" Jane Margolies in the NY Times. "Visitors to this rainy town," she writes, "whose main industries are logging and two correctional facilities, have more than tripled for the first eight months of this year, compared with the same period last year, according to the local Chamber of Commerce."

What's interesting about the article, though, is that it really doesn't have anything good to say about the town. Margolies runs through the obligatory rigmarole of Twilight-themed tours and hotel rooms, but doesn't say anything about the place itself, which isn't particularly surprising. In many ways, Forks is a very sad place, which is only reinforced by its embrace of a pop culture phenomenon to generate commerce.

I stayed in Forks earlier this year on my first, long-delayed visit to the Olympic Peninsula. Like a lot of small logging towns, Forks' glory days are essentially behind it. It's a page of the Northwest's history books, but not the charming sort, like Port Townsend, that can draw tourists by turning itself into a museum. Forks isn't old-timey, nor picturesque. It's just a functional small-town built by logging, struggling with adjusting to a new economic order that's largely rendered its traditional industries irrelevant. And in that, it's hardly alone in the Pacific Northwest.

The sidewalks roll up around nine o'clock. There's a few restaurants but no real bars to speak of (at least not the sort the average tourist is likely to dare venturing into). Going out in search of beer to drink back in the motel room, I found myself in a long line at the gas station minimart, caught in a conversation between the older woman behind the counter and the mostly locals in line, discussing the truancy of the clerk's teenage grand-daughter, who lived with her and who was mysteriously unaccounted for that night.

There were several phone calls to friends' parents, between the occasional promises from patrons to keep an eye out, as they paid for half-racks of Coors and Budweiser (I stuck out like a sore thumb with my sixer of Red Hook), and headed out to their pickup trucks to take off down the road, more often than not at politely safe speeds, with heavy metal or classic rock blaring.

It's easy to make snobbish urbanite jokes at the expense of small towns, and Forks offers up plenty of material. For instance, I ate at two restaurants while I was there, and went in to check out two more. Almost all the waitresses I saw were young and pregnant. Cue jokes, right? Well, actually, to judge by demographic data, something entirely different was happening.

The most recent teen pregnancy numbers I could find from the Dept. of Health are for 2007. That year, there were 24.7 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage women aged 15-17 in Clallam County, where Forks is located. In King County, the number for the same age range was actually higher, at 26.5. Looking at the age 18- to 19-year-old group, there's a dramatic flip: Clallam's rate is 98 per 1,000 as opposed to King's 72.5.

So what does that say? Mainly, it suggests that people in Forks have other priorities at the age of 18 than college. According to 2000 Census data (the most recent year available on Forks specifically; see here for FactFinder), only 10 percent of the population had complete a bachelor's degree or higher, less than half the national rate. By 2007, Clallam County as a whole had only 20 percent of its population with a post-secondary degree, almost five points below the national average.

In other words, even as the traditional blue collar industries that supported those communities have slowly been dying, the social patterns remain largely unchanged. Kids in Forks start families earlier and don't prioritize education (which, it should be pointed out, dovetails with the plot of Meyers' books). Easy to make jokes at, sure, but oddly touching and sad at the same time.

The morning I left, I found myself interrupted while trying to pay for breakfast at the bustling cafe I went to by a series of phone calls. The phones had been ringing off the hook, and a stressed out, busy waitress (again pregnant) would answer the phone and, increasingly annoyed, suggest they call the visitor center.

"Kids," she explained with a weary smile as she took my money. "They keep prank calling us, asking if we know Edward and Bella."

Meyers has already completed her series, and though the movies will continue for the next few years, no doubt keeping Forks on the map, the big question is what happens to Forks next? Once the influx of pop culture tourists dries up as Meyers' books fall off the front pages and into the collective pop culture memory, Forks will still be there, but its future is as unclear as ever.