This is the town of Mayberry, North Carolina. But it is also somewhere else. Hint! See where Sheriff Taylor's house is marked on the map? Right.next door lived another very famous fictional family...the Cleavers...
It's called Orion Street (wide street with superbly kept, generally one-story houses with large front yards, practically extinct in surrounding Los Angeles county) in Van Nuys, Calif. in the San Fernando Valley part of L.A. (widely considered unfashionable.)
A block away from this neighborhood cottage industry of photogenic houses still used in tv, film and advertising productions is barrio slum housing for miles, meaning once nice houses with graffiti all over them, and dangerous inhabitants.
The Mayberry fishing hole was the Franklin Canyon Reservoir in Beverly Hills. Its surrounding houses range in price from $800,000.00 to untold millions.
The Franklin Canyon Reservoir is a real L.A. water source, and 45 years ago, it was not a park. It was a reservoir with access, beyond the Dept. of Water and Power, only to the five huge estates that surrounded it (other than it's rental for film, tv, advertising production work, etc.)
