“The Waltons” was filmed primarily in Southern California, not in rural Virginia like the story setting suggests. The core sets and most shooting took place on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California, with nearby outdoor locations standing in for “Walton’s Mountain.”

Main filming locations

  • Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank – The town of Walton’s Mountain and the exterior façade of the Walton house were built on the backlot at Warner Bros., near the Los Angeles River.
  • Hollywood Hills, Burbank side – Hills opposite the studio lot were used to represent the Blue Ridge-style mountain seen behind the Walton home.
  • Interior sets – Most interiors (Walton house, Ike Godsey’s store, the Baldwin sisters’ home) were filmed on soundstages at Warner Bros., especially Stage 26.

Outdoor & rural stand‑ins

  • Frazier Park, California – Early seasons used this mountain community north of Los Angeles for many exterior rural scenes meant to evoke Depression‑era Virginia.
  • Franklin Canyon Park, Beverly Hills – Some outdoor sequences, including wooded and pond areas, were shot here.
  • Port Hueneme, California – Certain episodes used this coastal town as a filming location, as listed in production records.

Specials and later productions

  • “The Homecoming” (1971 TV movie) – Exterior scenes for the original Waltons Christmas story were filmed in Teton National Forest near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, before the series moved to the Burbank-based sets.
  • Reunion movies – After the original set was destroyed, a new Walton house façade was built on a different backlot (the old Columbia Ranch, later Warner Ranch) for later reunion productions.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.