Where Is Friday The 13th's Camp Crystal Lake Located?

Where is Friday The 13th's Camp Crystal Lake supposed to be located within the movie franchise? The makers of Friday The 13th were eager to replicate the success of John Carpenter's then-recent Halloween, which became the highest-grossing independent movie at that time. Friday The 13th took Halloween's basic blueprint of teenagers being stalked by a killer in an isolated locale and ramped up the gore and sexuality. Jason would return in various entries in the years that passed. The original Friday The 13th and many of its sequels take place at Camp Crystal Lake.

The movie revealed that a young Jason was bullied and teased by other children at the camp, who later pushed him into the water. Crystal Lake camp counselors failed to notice, and he drowned, and his mother Pamela vowed to prevent the camp from reopening, leading to her rampage in the 1980 movie. Despite Friday The 13th villain Pamela Voorhees being very dead by the end, a sequel was quickly greenlit. This saw her presumed deceased son Jason Voorhees picking up the machete, and massacring his way through almost annual sequels throughout the 1980s. A potential reboot or legacy sequel for the Friday the 13th movies would revisit Camp Crystal Lake, but it's been stuck in development.

Where Friday The 13th's Camp Crystal Lake Is Located

Camp Crystal Lake Is In A Fictional New Jersey County

In the world of the Friday The 13th franchise, Camp Crystal Lake is located in Cunningham County, New Jersey. Cunningham County itself is named for Sean S. Cunningham, the director of the original Friday The 13th. The location of the camp led to a famous continuity issue during Freddy Vs Jason, where the movie's teen heroes have to drive an unconscious Jason from Springwood, Ohio to Camp Crystal Lake in New Jersey. While this trip would be an estimated 600 miles, the movie fudges this timeline to make it look like the two locales are close together.

Camp Crystal Lake also went by other names in the Friday The 13th movie series, including Camp Forest Green in part 6 - which was an attempt to rebrand the camp and forget about Jason's exploits - while locals dubbed it "Camp Blood." Camp Crystal Lake itself is a fictional location, but it was filmed in a real place.

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Friday The 13th Was Filmed At A Totally Different Camp

The Movie Was Filmed At Various New Jersey Locations

The original Friday The 13th wasn’t filmed at a real location called Camp Crystal Lake. That's because Camp Crystal Lake doesn't exist in its entirety. The movie was filmed in New Jersey in late 1979 around the towns of Hardwick, Blairstown, and Hope. Camp scenes, however, were filmed at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco.

Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco is in Hardwick, New Jersey. At the time of filming, it was a working Boy Scout Camp. Operating since 1927, it’s still a working camp and operating under the same name today. In fact, the camp welcomes Boy Scout troops from all over the United States regularly. Though it operates as a summer camp, it does offer year-round camping opportunities for troops as well. It's not open to the public without permission.

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Can You Visit Camp Crystal Lake?

Fans Can Visit The Filming Locations For Camp Crystal Lake

Though Camp Crystal Lake might be fictional (and one of the most famous movie summer camps), that doesn’t mean that fans of the franchise can’t visit it. Because it’s still an active Boy Scout camping destination, the filming locations still get a lot of use.

Tours are offered of the iconic filming locations for Friday The 13th at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco through Crystal Lake Tours as well so that the legacy of the movie is preserved. Tours, however, are never scheduled when Boy Scout troops are using the campgrounds so as not to interfere with the organization.

Crystal Lake Tours offers fans guided tours of the property where they can actually participate in some classic camper activities seen in the movies (without any of the bloodshed). The tour provides archery, canoeing, and more for visitors. There have also been tours in the past that have included reunions of Friday the 13th cast members. The season for touring typically ends in early October before the weather turns too cold for the fall/winter months, and then reopens in the spring.

Of course, for those who can’t tour in person, the touring company also offers memorabilia made exclusively for Camp Crystal Lake for Friday the 13th fans on their website year-round as well. Though the camp isn’t officially associated with any movie studio, they do offer signed items from actors for sale. They even offer items made from wood from the cabins and docks that were taken down after filming. All of the profit from the sales of those items help to keep the camp operational and the tours running for Friday the 13th movie fans.

Friday the 13th is a horror-slasher film by director Sean S. Cunningham and follows a group of camp counselors who are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer known to be the site of a child's drowning and a grisly double murder. The film began a decades-long franchise that would eventually lead to the creation of Jason Vorhees, one of the most popular horror icons of all time.

Director Sean S. Cunningham

Release Date May 9, 1980

Writers Victor Miller

Cast Peter Brouwer , Adrienne King , Betsy Palmer , Jeannine Taylor , Kevin Bacon , Robbi Morgan , Harry Crosby

Runtime 95 minutes