Nicholas Sparks Filming Locations, from Savannah to Rodanthe

Four Nicholas Sparks adaptations were shot within a day's drive of each other on the Atlantic seaboard, and they are usually written up as one trip. They can be, but not casually: the coast bends, the barrier islands are reached by long causeways, and the hundred and eighty miles between the southernmost and northernmost location take the better part of five hours.

This file takes them in geographic order from south to north (Tybee Island, Southport, Wilmington, Rodanthe) with the addresses, what each place was used for, and its status now. The fifth adaptation, The Notebook, sits three hundred miles further south in South Carolina and has its own file.

The four productions, and where each one actually filmed

Tybee Island and Savannah · The Last Song (2010)

Savannah itself supplies the town scenes, and the city's squares are covered more fully in the Savannah file and the USA master index.

Southport · Safe Haven (2013) and A Walk to Remember (2002)

Southport is the densest single location on this coast: two of the four films used it, a long-running television series used it, and the town is small enough that the whole circuit is a ninety-minute walk. The Southport file maps it street by street; the entries below are the ones specific to these two films.

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Wilmington · A Walk to Remember (2002)

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Rodanthe · Nights in Rodanthe (2008)

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Driving the coast in three days

Day one: Tybee Island and Savannah, then the four-hour run north to Southport. Day two: Southport on foot in the morning, the ferry across the Cape Fear River, Wilmington in the afternoon. Day three: the long drive up to Hatteras Island, which takes five hours from Wilmington and is the least direct part of the route.

Doing it in reverse is easier in summer, because the Outer Banks changeover traffic on a Saturday can add two hours to the Rodanthe leg. For the practical side of an American road trip: distances, tolls, phone coverage on the barrier islands: see travel tips and the prepaid SIM file.

What has changed since these films were made

The coast rewrites itself faster than the productions that used it. Since 2008 the Rodanthe house has moved, Highway 12 has been realigned twice after storm breaches, the Southport store frontage has been struck, and Wilmington's riverfront has been substantially rebuilt. Only the chapel outside Wilmington and Franklin Square Park in Southport are unchanged in a way a visitor would notice.

That rate of change is the argument for dating every entry. The location index lets you filter this coast by status if you want to see only what still stands.

Why this coast, and why it keeps eroding

The Outer Banks are barrier islands: long, narrow sandbars sitting a few kilometres off the mainland, built and rebuilt by the ocean. They migrate landward over time, which is a normal geological process and a serious problem for anything built on them.

That is the context for the Rodanthe house. It was not badly sited by the standards of when it was built; the island moved out from under it. Several neighbouring houses have since collapsed into the surf and others have been relocated inland, and Highway 12 has been realigned more than once after storm breaches.

For a location file the implication is unusual and worth stating: on this coast the changed status is often literal. The building is the same and the ground it stands on is not.

Wilmington as the engine

A large studio complex opened at Wilmington in the mid-1980s and made coastal North Carolina the most-filmed shoreline in the country outside California. Everything in this file except the Georgia locations sits inside its daily travel radius.

The lot itself is a working studio and is not open to visitors, which is the difference between it and Burbank. What is open is everything the productions used outside it: the riverfront, the beaches at Wrightsville and Kure, and Southport thirty miles south.

Driving the coast, in detail

The Wilmington to Rodanthe leg is the one people underestimate. There is no coastal road: the route runs inland to Jacksonville and New Bern and comes back east, and the last stretch is a single carriageway along a barrier island.

Storms, closures and timing

Hurricane season runs from June to November with the peak in August and September, and it is a real constraint on this coast, not a formality. Highway 12 is overwashed and closed regularly, mandatory evacuations of Hatteras Island happen, and accommodation is non-refundable more often than not.

Late spring, May and early June, is the best window: warm, quiet, before the school holidays and before the season. October is the second best if the forecast is clear.

Where to stay along the route

• Southport or Wilmington for the first two days. Southport is small and charming; Wilmington has more rooms and more to eat.
• Nags Head or Kill Devil Hills for the Outer Banks, rather than Rodanthe itself: more accommodation, and forty minutes from the village.
• Tybee Island or Savannah at the southern end, covered in the Savannah file.

Weekly rentals dominate the Outer Banks and change over on Saturdays, which is why Saturday traffic on Highway 12 can add two hours to the drive. Moving on any other day is materially easier.

The fifth adaptation, and why it is filed elsewhere

Four adaptations are covered above. A fifth, The Choice (2016), was also shot on this coast, and its locations are Southport's rather than its own: the same waterfront, the same residential streets, plus Wrightsville Beach twenty minutes east of Wilmington.

It is therefore filed in the Southport file, alongside the two other productions that used those streets: because a visitor standing on Bay Street is standing in all three at once, and splitting them across three pages would make that harder to see rather than easier.

The full index, filterable by production and by whether a location still stands, is at the location index.

Frequently asked questions

Which Nicholas Sparks films were shot in North Carolina?

A Walk to Remember at Wilmington, Nights in Rodanthe on Hatteras Island, The Last Song on Tybee Island in Georgia and Safe Haven at Southport. The Notebook is the outlier: it is set in North Carolina and was shot almost entirely in South Carolina, which is why it has a file of its own.

Is the house from Nights in Rodanthe still there?

Yes, but it is not where it was filmed. Erosion left the house standing in the surf, and in 2010 it was lifted and moved inland within Rodanthe, where it now operates as a rental property. The beach frontage seen in the film has been lost to the sea.

Can you visit the Safe Haven locations in Southport?

Most of them, yes. The waterfront, the dock, Franklin Square Park and the general store frontage are all on public streets in a town small enough to walk in an afternoon. The house used for Katie is private and stands outside the centre.

How far apart are the Nicholas Sparks locations?

The coastal stretch runs about a hundred and eighty miles from Southport in the south to Rodanthe on Hatteras Island in the north, but there is no fast road between them. Allow three days: one for Wilmington and Southport, one for the drive up the Outer Banks, one for Rodanthe and the return.