Hill Valley is a fictional town in California that serves as the setting of the Back to the Future trilogy and its animated spin-off series.

It had been used for many films and television shows dating back to 1948's An Act of Murder,[4] including the first 1959 episode of the sci-fi series The Twilight Zone, called "Where Is Everybody?

On November 6, 1990, an arson fire on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot destroyed much of Courthouse Square, the setting in which all the other time periods were filmed.

On February 14, 1999, a fire at Whittier High School, California, where some, mostly exterior scenes were filmed,[8] destroyed the men's gym there.

The following information is taken directly from places and events shown or mentioned in the three films: The town of Hill Valley was first settled in 1850 and incorporated in 1865.

Construction of a new county courthouse was well underway in 1885, the setting of Back to the Future Part III, in which a new clock was dedicated for the building.

The clock is never repaired and becomes a local landmark, left in its non-functional state at the behest of the Hill Valley Preservation Society.

In the revised timeline, the broken piece of ledge from Doc Brown's successful attempt to channel lightning from the clock tower is likewise never repaired, as can be seen when Marty returns to 1985 and in 2015, but not in the alternate 1985.

"That was always one of the major elements of the story even in its earliest incarnation," screenwriter Bob Gale says in The Making of Back to the Future, "was to take a place and show what happens to it over a period of thirty years.

The "Welcome to Hill Valley" sign in 1985 does not contain any signage representing any clubs and mentions the name of Mayor Goldie Wilson.

In Back to the Future Part II, a nightmarish alternate version of Hill Valley, dubbed 1985A by Doc, is depicted with a partial history.

All of the local businesses in the downtown area closed or relocated and were replaced with strip clubs, porn theaters, and brothels.

Hill Valley's public schools burned down and the courthouse was converted into Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise Casino and Hotel.

George reprises his "peeping Tom" activities as seen in Back to the Future, under the guise of monitoring security camera footage for Citizen Brown.

[17] The last attempt to fix the damages involved with the events of Back to the Future: The Game ends with even a more radical change.

Edna Strickland travels under an assumed name to 1876 to act as a moral guide of the newly founded Hill Valley.

After a failed confrontation with Beauregard Tannen, a Confederate soldier who built and founded the Palace Saloon, she accidentally causes a conflagration that consumes Hill Valley, turning it into a ghost town with herself as the only resident.

Director Robert Zemeckis adds that the continuity between the different eras in Hill Valley's history is an example of the adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

Back to the Future has been criticized for presenting an idealized 1950s setting almost entirely populated by White people, and contrasting this with a more troubled 1985 town run by a Black mayor.

Marty's personal family crisis, marked by a socially impotent father and an alcoholic mother, is mirrored in the condition of Hill Valley.

Boarded-up businesses, schoolyard graffiti, and an adult-video bookstore placed in the center of town indicate that the Hill Valley of 1985 is suffering from severe economic and moral decline.

Alongside these visual signifiers of socioeconomic crisis are posters of the Black mayor, Goldie Wilson, scattered throughout downtown Hill Valley.