Visiting the Mar-T Cafe in North Bend, WA in September 1990

In anticipation of the second season premiere of Twin Peaks in September 1990, Kitsap Sun reporter Julie McCormick published two stories about locations from the Real Twin Peaks of Washington state on September 27, 1990. The first story features a visit to the former Mar-T Cafe in North Bend known today as Twede’s Cafe. This small town diner served as the interior and exterior location of the Double R Diner from David Lynch and Mark Frost’s wonderful and strange show. 

SUN WATCH | IN SEARCH OF THE REAL TWIN PEAKS, SEPT. 27, 1990

On Thursday, Sept. 27, 1990, the Kitsap Sun published two stories about the Real Twin Peaks in their arts and entertainment supplement titled “Sun Watch.” The front cover contained two Twin Peaks-related images.

The first features Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) teasing the Sunday, September 30 premiere of episode 2.001.

“Who killed Laura Palmer? Who shot FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLauchlan [sic], above)? The producers of ABC’s mysterious mystery series ‘Twin Peaks’ promise that all will be revealed – sort of. A two-hour season premiere airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channel 4; the show assumes its regular time slot the following Saturday at 10 p.m. TV listings start on Page 9.”

The second image features Pat Cokewell, the previous owner of the Mar-T Cafe in North Bend holding cherry pie while sitting at the counter inside the diner. The cover highlights two stories featured in this issue.

“Did you know that Laura Palmer’s body was found in Kitsap County, on the shores of Kiana Lodge? A Sun reporter and photographer search out true-life locations for the popular TV show.”

I’ll discuss the second story about Kiana Lodge in another article.

It’s great seeing Pat sitting at the original counter that was later demolished when Kyle Twede assumed ownership in 1997. The counter seen in Twin Peaks: The Return is different than the one pictured above.

WHO IS JULIE MCCORMICK FROM THE KITSAP SUN?

Reporter Julie McCormick had a 21-year career at the Kitsap Sun until her retirement in the fall of 2006. She was originally hired as a temporary replacement for a reporter who was going on maternity leave. They were supposed to spend a week together while Julie learned the county government beat, but the expectant mother gave birth on the first day. In subsequent years, she moved through a number of beats including writing about the Real Twin Peaks in 1990.

In 2002, she took on the then newly created health and human services beat. According to her retirement article from January 28, 2007 in the Kitsap Sun, this beat would “ultimately win her her greatest recognition.”

“As lead reporter for the Sun’s eight-month-long special series, The Meth Toll, she headed a project that would win both regional and national recognition, including a $10,000 cash award from the nonprofit Drug Strategies program. Half of that money helped establish what has become an ongoing fund supported by the Scripps Foundation for anti-drug efforts in Kitsap County. ‘The only important reward in this particular profession,’ she said in looking back, ‘is when something I’ve written helps open readers’ eyes, helped change someone’s life or an unresponsive system. I’m glad to say that’s happened to me a lot in small ways and large.’

McCormick passed in her sleep at her home in Port Townsend on Oct. 24, 2019 at the age of 75. Toward the end of her life, she had experienced health issues but never “lost the spark, intelligence and grit that make her part of the Sun’s newsroom lore” according to David Nelson’s tribute published on Nov. 17, 2019 in the digital paper.

THEY FOUND PIE TO DIE FOR IN QUAINT CAFE

Below is a copy and transcript of McCormick’s story about the Mar-T Cafe. She includes an image of the original “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign spot found along Reinig Road in Snoqualmie. I included some additional photos and corrections for McCormick’s story.

NORTH BEND — This is where pies go when they die. No less an expert than Special Agent Dale B. Cooper, Federal Bureau of Investigation, said so.

Cooper is the main man in Twin Peaks, whose initials more than strongly resemble those of legendary Northwest airplane hijacker D.B. Coop-er, the man who parachuted from existence on a flight over the Cascades.

Agent Cooper favors hot, black coffee and the cherry pie at the Double R Cafe, known in real life as the Mar-T in North Bend, about half an hour east of Seattle via 1-90.

This is Twin Peaks country, with the mountain played by Mount Si. Someone said Twin Peaks is “what you might find if you dragged the bottom of Lake Wobegon,” but Agent Cooper considers it full of “decency, honor and dignity.”

The Mar-T sported a plastic sign advertising its Twin Peaks pies until someone stole it. T-shirts with the same message are selling at a fast clip.

The whole cafe has been reproduced on a Hollywood set, right down to the white-and-pink neon ceiling and the hand-stenciled sign for spaghetti night, “includes trip to salad bar.”

The reconstructed Mar-T aisles are wider, though, for Audrey Horne to dance in, and there’s a jukebox instead of a cigarette machine that plays that dreamy music she likes so well.

Mar-T owner Pat Cokewell, with her blond french twist and easygoing manner, more than a little resembles the Double R’s Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) if Norma were about to retire. She has sent Lipton a pair of the cherry-pie-and-coffee earrings made by a Redmond woman that she sells in her cafe. She thinks the show’s producers are just quirky enough to have Lipton wear them in Sunday’s opening show.

Norma’s honey, Big Ed, is nowhere to be seen, his gas station outside nearby Preston turned into a windsock shop and the pumps pulled.

The show with the pies to die for has doubled Cokewell’s business since it began, which is great since business fell by more than that 12 years ago when the state finally got around to completing the freeway and skirting the town at the base of Snoqualmie Pass.

Last Thursday afternoon, as Cokewell posed for The Sun, Alan Thayer of Eugene, Ore., in Bermuda shorts and with a camera slung around his neck, caught a shot as he came in the door.

Thayer and Gail Goodyear were staying at the Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls, which from the outside looks exactly like ‘Twin Peaks’ director David Lynch thought Benjamin Horne’s Great Northern Hotel should look. Thayer and Goodyear became Peakies because of a morning-show host friend who threw a Peaks party, Thayer said, and they love the show because it’s different.

So they vacationed in Twin Peaks, which actually exists not as a town but as a state park nearby. Cokewell stopped counting after 24 different news organizations had contacted her during the show’s first run last spring. Since publicity about the new season began, she’s talked to about 10.

The woman who makes the pies to die for — which Thayer and Good-year promptly ordered — is Garnet Cross, a 73-year-old diabetic who can’t eat her own seeecret crust and who works on a crowded table at the back of the busy kitchen.

Cross now needs an assistant to fill the orders pouring in from Peakies all over the country. Last Thursday, New York, Virginia and North Carolina Peakies called to order. Cross’ cherry filling recipe is in October’s Ladies Home Journal.

Director Lynch actually favored the chocolate and peanut butter when the show was filming, said Cokewell. But Kyle MacLachlan, who plays Agent Cooper, ordered 30 for the golf tournament he played in his home-town of Yakima this summer.

Twin Peaks country includes the nearby town of Snoqualmie, connected to North Bend by Reining Road, where the opening shot of the mountain was filmed and where the rusted railroad bridge on which Ronette Pulaski staggered back into town is located.

In Snoqualmie, the museum of derelict railroad cars offered a perfect grim setting for the murder site. [ed. note: the train graveyard was once located along the road known today as Snoqualmie Parkway. You can see glimpses of it in the “Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack” produced for the Japanese market in the early 1990s]

The gazebo where Madelyn [sic] made a video to fool Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) is in Snoqualmie [ed note. the white gazebo seen in the show was found in Malibou Lake Mountain Club which burned down in Nov. 2018. The gazebo in Snoqualmie was featured in a deleted scene from the Pilot].

The roadhouse is the Colonial Inn in Falls City [sic]

Are you Peaked-out yet? Radio station KLSY will hold “Twin Peaks Twin Parties” at the Salish Lodge and the Mar-T Sunday to kick off the season opener. For the latest scoop on “Twin Peaks,” call the “Twin Peaks” Hotline, (206) 455-KLSY, Ext. 222.

I love reading these early reports from the Real Twin Peaks. During my first visit in Aug. 1996, I recall hearing David Lynch liked the chocolate and peanut butter pie more than the cherry pie. Sadly, that pie never made it into the show.