25 years after its premiere, ‘Gilmore Girls’ still draws fans to small town Connecticut

The town of New Milford in the leafy hills of northwest Connecticut looks like the set of Gilmore Girls come to life.

White-steepled buildings and mom-and-pop-shops surround the classic New England town green. There’s even a band stand at the center of it all, and it looks a lot like the gazebo where mother-daughter pair Lorelai and Rory Gilmore sat for their heart-to-hearts on the show.

Fans of the series, which turns 25 this fall, trickle in all year round for photos on the town green. Recently, the town even hosted a “Weekend in the Life” festival for thousands hoping to get a taste of the Stars Hollow experience, complete with meet-and-greet events with some of the stars from the series.

Generations of fans 

“Our moms heard about the event,” said 11-year-old Abby Thorgersen.

Abby and her best friend, Rylie Nicollet, traveled with their moms Kim Thorgersen and Kerry Nicollet from Long Island, New York for the festival. The girls dressed up in blue and grey prep school uniforms to match Rory Gilmore on the show.

Viewers first watched young mom Lorelai Gilmore and her teenage daughter Rory walk into a diner and beg for their coffee fix in October 2000. Gilmore Girls aired for seven seasons — plus a 2016 revival on Netflix. Over the past few years, the show has seen a surge in streaming in the fall.

But Abby and Rylie watch it year round.

“We watch it together,” Abby said. “I would say I’ve seen it, like,15 times from start to finish.”

“I finished it like once, but I keep watching multiple episodes,” Rylie said.

I met the girls waiting in line to meet actor Scott Patterson, who played Luke Danes, a main love interest and coffee supplier on the show. The moms may have been just as excited to meet him as the girls. They brought picture frames for autographs and the girls brought a gift for Patterson — a beaded friendship bracelet that spells “L-U-K-E”.

After the photo-op, Abby and Rylie were a bit starstruck.

“They have no words!” Kerry Nicollet said.

Browsing at a festival merch table, fans Shawna Tobens and her daughter Angelina said they got to meet Patterson multiple times over the festival weekend.

“It feels like it’s really him,” Tobens said.

“He’s very kind. Very genuine!” Angelina said.

The Tobens came to Connecticut all the way from Celina, Ohio and made a whole week of it — including a visit to Yale, the university that Rory Gilmore attends. But of all the towns they’d visited so far, Shawna said New Milford feels the most like Stars Hollow.

“This is it. Right here,” Tobens said, with a caveat. “We haven’t been to Washington.”

The town that inspired Stars Hollow

So where is the real Stars Hollow, Connecticut? Depends on who you ask.

Less than ten miles away, the town of Washington, Connecticut is home to about 4,000 residents — just a fraction of the number in New Milford. Washington is also where show creator Amy Sherman Palladino stayed when she got the inspiration to write Gilmore Girls.

The Mayflower Inn, where Sherman Palladino spent the night, became the Independence Inn on the show. Sherman Palladino told Deseret News that she saw a customer go behind the counter at a busy diner in town to pour themselves coffee — and she took notes. That’s something Lorelai does at Luke’s Diner all the time.

“It doesn’t exactly look like the Gilmore Girls, but the people, the characters, the way we operate. We still have town meetings. We still vote for our town budget with a show of hands,” Economic Development Coordinator Michelle Gorra said. “That, I think, is the part that she really captured well.”

Inside her office at the Washington town hall, Gorra said the town embraces its role in the show’s origin story. According to her, Gilmore Girls content on the town’s tourism blog gets nearly five times the traffic of any other content on the website. The Connecticut state tourism office says its website sees the same seasonal surge that some streamers do — with Gilmore Girls content hits increasing nearly 150% in the fall.

Across the way at the Washington Food Market, which looks a lot like Doose’s Market on the show, co-owner Lisa Stein wanted to set the record straight. She said Washington is Stars Hollow.

“I do live in New Milford, so, you know, I get that, but this is definitely Stars Hollow,” Stein said. “It’s a lot smaller of a town, more tight knit.”

And, Stein said, this tight-knit community of Washington embraces the giddy Gilmore Girls fans, too.

To hear more about how Gilmore Girls shaped generations of fans, and how Connecticut shaped the show, check out Generation Gilmore Girls from Connecticut Public.  Visit ctpublic.org/gilmore to subscribe.