Forks High School
Built in 1925, this high school in Forks, Washington (see Forks, Washington) serves more than 300 students in the Forks area. The high school came to attention due to it being used as a setting in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga of novels. The dark fantasy series centers around a teenage girl named Isabella "Bella" Marie Swan. Bella moves to Forks in order to live with her father. While there, she attends Forks High School.

It is here at the high school that Bella meets a mysterious boy named Edward Cullen. Only, Edward is not a boy. Edward is a vampire. Born on June 20, 1901, Edward is more than a hundred years old. Edward became a vampire at the age of 17 in order to survive the Spanish flu epidemic in Chicago, Illinois. Despite their differences, the two fall in love.

The Forks High School featured in the novels is a creation of Stephenie Meyer's imagination. Never having visited Forks prior to writing Twilight, the school in Meyer's books is a collection of buildings. The actual school is a single brick building that is smaller in scope.

Forks High School has been included in guided tours offered by the Forks Chamber of Commerce (see Forks Chamber of Commerce Twilight Tours). A tour of the school interior was also conducted as part of 2008's "Stephenie Meyer Day" celebration in the city.

Twilighters for Forks
Apparently the actual Forks High School is destined for partial demolition as of the time of this article. The city of Forks is unable to afford repairs needed on the building's facade. Fans of the Twilight Saga have taken up preserving the building as a cause. They have set up a non-profit organization called "Twilighters for Forks" and are gathering donations to save the building. Should the organization not succeed in saving the old high school building, the money will instead be used to support youth and community services in the city. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made over the Internet through the Web site listed below.

Movie Adaptation
When Summit Entertainment was still in pre-production stages on the film adaptation of the first novel in the series, Twilight, they had originally planned to film some of the movie in the Forks area. However, the state of Oregon offered a variety of incentives for the production to move to the state to the south of Washington that also offered a similar setting. The offer was too good to pass up and production was moved to the area around the cities of Portland and Saint Helens in Oregon. However, the production team still held out hopes to film at least the exterior scenes outside Forks High School.

In the end, the distance between the locations would prove to be too much and the filmmakers found what they believed to be an adequate substitute for the high school at the Kalama Middle High School in Kalama, Washington (see Madison High School, Portland, OR under Movie Locations). Those scenes included the pivotal cafeteria sequences, as well as the scenes involving the biology lab.