Fargo: Minnesota Stand-Ins and a Snowbound Crime

A deal is struck in Fargo, North Dakota, though the cameras never went there. Jerome "Jerry" Lundegaard meets Gaear Grimsrud and Carl Showalter at a bar and hires them to kidnap his wife, Jean. Their price is a new Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera plus half of an $80,000 ransom. None of Fargo was filmed in Fargo: the scene was shot at the King of Clubs, a pool hall and bar on Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis. It was demolished in 2003 and replaced by low-income housing, so only the street remains to visit.

Location precision: The story puts the bar in Fargo; the pin marks Central Avenue Northeast in Minneapolis, where the demolished King of Clubs stood.

Jerry is executive sales manager at a Minneapolis dealership owned by his father-in-law, Wade Gustafson. Desperate for cash, he thinks Wade is backing a $750,000 deal. Instead Wade and his accountant tell him he will get only a modest finder's fee, and the kidnapping plot is already moving. The dealership was filmed at Wally McCarthy Oldsmobile in Richfield, a southern suburb of Minneapolis. The site is now occupied by Best Buy's national corporate headquarters, so nothing of the showroom remains to see.

Location precision: The dealership building is gone; the pin marks the Best Buy headquarters that now occupies the site in Richfield.

A state trooper stops Carl and Gaear near Brainerd for not displaying temporary registration tags on their new Oldsmobile. When he hears Jean whimpering in the back seat, Gaear shoots him dead. Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson, seven months pregnant, begins investigating. Despite the setting, the film's snow scenes were shot in northern Minnesota and northeastern North Dakota, not near Brainerd or Fargo, so this is a story place rather than a filming site.

Location precision: The film names Brainerd but was not shot there; the pin marks the town as the area of the story.

Wade insists on delivering the ransom himself and meets Carl at a parking garage. He refuses to hand over the money without seeing his daughter, so Carl shoots him; Wade fires back and wounds Carl in the jaw. Carl kills Wade and a garage attendant, then drives away with the ransom. The scene was filmed in two adjacent parking garages on South 8th Street in downtown Minneapolis.

Location precision: The film does not name the garage; the pin marks South 8th Street in downtown Minneapolis, where two adjacent garages were used.

In the story, Carl and Gaear take Jean to a remote cabin in Moose Lake. At the end Marge drives there, sees the Ciera and then discovers Gaear feeding Carl's body into a woodchipper. She shoots him in the leg and arrests him. The hideout was filmed on the shore of Square Lake, near May, Minnesota. The cabin was relocated to Barnes, Wisconsin, in 2002.

Location precision: The story places the cabin at Moose Lake; the pin marks Square Lake near May, where it was filmed before being moved.

The story ends with Jerry's arrest by state troopers at a motel outside Bismarck, North Dakota. The scene was filmed at the Hitching Post Motel in Forest Lake, north of Minneapolis, not in North Dakota. The film opens with the text "This is a true story." The Coen brothers said they based the script on an actual criminal event but wrote a fictional story around it, and Joel Coen later said the actual murders were not committed in Minnesota.

Location precision: The motel exists only as a story place; the filming site in Forest Lake could not be pinned reliably, so this stop has no map pin.

The film never shot a frame in its title city, but Fargo has claimed it anyway. The Fargo-Moorhead Convention & Visitors Bureau exhibits original script copies and several props used in the film, including the wood chipper from the Moose Lake finale, where Marge finds Gaear feeding Carl's body into the machine. It is the one stop on this route where something from the film itself can still be seen.

Location precision: The source says the visitors bureau exhibits the props without naming the building; the pin marks the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center.

Visitor guidance: Confirm opening hours with the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center before you go.