Ready to Get ‘Lost’? Check Out Filming Locations From the Hit TV Show
For starters, the Others’ headquarters and DHARMA buildings are actually part of a YMCA camp in real life.
Published March 5 2024, 6:10 p.m. ET
Two decades after its premiere, the ABC sci-fi drama Lost remains a television favorite, with new viewers finding the show and meeting its castaways via streaming services.
Though the Emmy-winning series was set on a mysterious and mythological island in the South Pacific — with flashbacks taking place all over the world — most of the filming took place in Hawaiʻi. Here are some of the standout filming locations.
The Oceanic 815 crash site was actually Mokulē‘ia Beach.
Mokulē‘ia Beach on the northwest side of Oʻahu is one of the plane-crash settings from the show — it’s the beach where Jack, Kate, Locke, and other Oceanic 815 survivors worked to save fellow passengers from the fuselage.
Crew members broke down a decommissioned Lockheed L-1011 jetliner and brought in the fake wreckage in 18 shipping containers for the filming of what was ABC’s most expensive pilot episodes to date, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Set dressers also purchased and scorched luggage and other passenger items for additional debris. And for the climactic scene when a wing crashes to the ground in a massive fireball, crew members suspended the wing 70 feet in the air with a crane.
Kualoa Ranch Private Nature Reserve provided stunning backdrops.
Many Lost settings — including Hurley’s golf course and the DHARMA Initiative’s Arrow and the Tempest stations — were filmed at the Kualoa Ranch Private Nature Reserve on the island of Oʻahu, according to Honolulu Magazine.
A 4,000-acre nature reserve and working cattle ranch, Kualoa Ranch has also served as a filming location for the films Jumanji, Kong: Skull Island, Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Pearl Harbor, Godzilla, Tears of the Sun, and 50 First Dates, as well as the TV shows Hawaii Five-O and Magnum P.I., its website reports.
David Morgan, an operations manager for the ranch, was a fan of the show and would routinely recognize locations on the show, according to The Associated Press. In fact, his Honolulu house even hosted the Lost scene in which Charlie and his brother talked about kicking their drug habit.
The YMCA’s Camp Erdman stood in as the Others’ houses.
The DHARMA houses where Ben, Juliet, and the rest of the Others took up residence is actually the YMCA of Honolulu’s Camp Erdman, near Waialua and just 10 minutes away from Mokulē‘ia Beach.
“Nestled between the Waianae Mountains and beaches of Mokuleia, Camp Erdman’s 20-acre sanctuary near Kaena Point is a place where big smiles abound, and kids, families, and groups enjoy a variety of programs and amenities, connecting with nature and their fellow campers,” the YMCA of Honolulu says about the property.
Oʻahu’s Byodo-In Temple became Jin and Sun’s wedding venue.
The temple where Jin and Sun tie the knot is, in real life, the Byodo-In Temple at the feet of O’ahu’s Ko’olau Mountains. This non-practicing Buddhist temple was built in 1963 as a small-scale replica of a nearly 1,000-year-old temple of the same name in Uji, Japan, according to its website.
