[1] Sunnydale's size and surroundings are implausible but justified given its origins — to sustain a human population for supernatural evils to prey upon.
The town's founder spared no expense to attract a populace, and Sunnydale thus contains many elements of a large city — which the show's writers utilized fully for comic effect and narrative convenience.
During the first three seasons, Sunnydale is shown to have 38,500 inhabitants,[2] very few high schools,[3] forty-three churches,[4] a small private college,[5] a zoo,[6] a museum,[7] and one modest main street.
The first is the entertainment district which contains the Bronze, Sunnydale's nightclub, which attracts some well-known artists despite a clientele consisting mainly of high-school kids.
[16] Directly beneath Sunnydale High School is a Hellmouth, a subterranean, mystical portal that attracts evil forces.
[17] Sunnydale exhibits many common horror-movie characteristics, including an abundance of dark alleyways, abandoned mansions, and factories.
[29] The episode "Pangs" reveals that Sunnydale is in the former homeland of the Chumash people, which is the area northwest of Los Angeles, centered on Santa Barbara County.
(The Mission La Purísima Concepción, originally sited near Point Conception and relocated to Lompoc would fit this description.
He founded Sunnydale (after considering the alternate names "Happydale" and "Sunny Acres") in a demon infested valley after a Navajo Slayer died there [39] in 1899.
This "Scooby Gang", eventually including popular cheerleader Cordelia Chase and Willow's boyfriend Oz, often hangs out at the Bronze, the Espresso Pump (a local coffee house with a retro gas station motif) and the Sun Cinema.
Another slayer, Faith, arrives in their senior year of high school (season 3) and lives at the Downtowner Motel[47] until she joins forces with Mayor Wilkins.
Cordelia finds herself in an alternate universe where The Master has risen to the surface and completely taken over the town, with the surviving human population living in terror of the vampires.
At the end of the third season (June 1999), Sunnydale High School is destroyed in a great conflict that kills Mayor Wilkins and Principal Snyder.
[49] Sometime between the fourth and fifth seasons (during the summer of 2000), the mysterious "Key" is transformed into Buffy's younger "sister", Dawn Summers and the evil goddess Glory arrives in the town, leading to an increase in the number of mentally ill patients due to her ability to suck the sanity from their brains to maintain her own.
In the episode "Disharmony", Cordelia Chase calls Willow from Los Angeles when her high school friend Harmony Kendall turns up.
At the beginning of the seventh season (fall 2002), Sunnydale High School was rebuilt on the same location as before — directly over the Hellmouth.
[52] Soon thereafter, the cataclysmic showdown between the Scooby Gang, the Potential Slayers Buffy has gathered together, and the First Evil results in the complete obliteration of the town.
The destruction of the city is mentioned several times during Angel's final season, mainly tying into Spike's brief ghostly status.
In the final arc of Season 8, the Scooby Gang return to the ruins of Sunnydale to secure the Seed of Wonder, an artifact that is the source of all magic on Earth, and serves as a battleground between themselves and a massive legion of extra-dimensional demons.