Population of Twin Peaks

[Colonel Cooper]

Sorry if this topic has been discussed before, I did a search and found nothing, so:

The population of Twin Peaks?

50,000+

Admittedly I know nothing of small-town American life, but at no time does Twin Peaks convince me that there are 50,000 people living there - 5,000 I could realistically accept, police force of half a dozen, travelling judge convening in the Roadhouse etc. Horne's department store would be weird, but could conceivable be a folly on Ben's part.

Is this more dicking around from the network or just sloppiness?

[vancurenw]

If I remember correctly, the population was supposed to be 5,100, but after the failure of another small-town themed show just before Twin Peaks aired, they changed it to 51,217 (forgot the exact number) for the pilot. I think even 5,100 is high for what we saw on the show.

[iar]

Yep... definitely.

It seems to me as though the network asked for the change, which Lynch and Frost (eventually?) agreed to but changed only the sign and not the nature of the show. There was no effort to make this town seem as though it had a population of over 51,000. Thank God! To me, it would not have worked like that. This was all about creating an isolated, small town (which is somewhat spread out) where everyone knows everyone else.

It irks me somewhat when I see the sign, but I'm just grateful that no changes to the atmosphere of the show seem to have been made.

Does anyone know when ABC asked for the population to be changed? Was it after the bulk of filming, or right at the beginning?

[Fire]

Sometimes I wonder what Twin Peaks would've been like if television and its people had never interfered with their various changes to the original idea. There are smaller things such as the aforementioned sign, but monumental things such as The Reveal and Cooper/Audrey.

I think about this a lot.

[qbin2001]

I always wondered what happens with the town sign prop after shooting. It was used again in the FWWM, so maybe it exist somewhere?

[tellharryididn'tcry]

i'm sure some lucky duck has it now unless they made the mistake of destroying it.

[vancurenw]

Someone at the festival told me that it was in the second floor of a two story building right across (west of?) the street from Twede's diner in North Bend until fairly recently. After that, I don't know what happened to it.