In “Back to the Future,” Marty McFly lives in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California.
Hill Valley is the central setting of the trilogy and appears across several eras: 1885, 1955, 1985, and 2015. Marty’s time-travel adventure begins when he travels from 1985 to 1955 in Doc Brown’s DeLorean, where he accidentally interferes with his parents’ first meeting.
The town’s name is itself a joke: “Hill” and “Valley” describe opposite geographical features. The films also build a detailed history for Hill Valley, including its courthouse square, clock tower, founding-era events, and alternate 1985 timeline. A common mix-up is confusing Hill Valley with a real California town; it is fictional, though the films place it in Northern California.