Oakdale (As the World Turns)

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Oakdale is the setting of the television soap opera As the World Turns.

Location

For many years, the writers have been firm on placing the city in the state of Illinois. By all indications, the city is unrelated to a real Oakdale, Illinois, however, show creator Irna Phillips may have modeled her fictional hamlet after this city, due to the small size of both entities. Though Oakdale is usually depicted as a fairly small town, it nonetheless is apparently large enough to have its own airport, a television station, and three major newspapers (two daily papers and a tabloid), and its hospital, Oakdale Memorial, is renowned enough to have attracted a number of world-class physcians and surgeons over the years. In a 1960 episode of As the World Turns recently shown at The World of Soap Themes, several small skyscrapers could be seen through the window of Chris Hughes' law office, thus suggesting that at least as far back as that decade, Oakdale was a large enough place to have some sort of commercial district.

Since the 1980s, Oakdale has had strong ties to the fashion industry, as designer Barbara Ryan headquartered her line there. (Her daughter Jennifer Munson is now also a designer in her own right.) Ryan's designs are showcased at the boutique Fashions, Ltd., which she and Lisa Miller Grimaldi founded in 1985. (Grimaldi is now the sole owner.) Carly Tenney-Snyder, another fairly well known designer, also resides in Oakdale.

Oakdale citizens pass their time at Al's Diner (which is across the street from the police station), Metro (a chic club downstairs from Java, a coffee shop), Groves Country club (known as "The Oakdale Yacht Club" until 2002), the Mona Lisa restaurant (which still exists in theory but has not been seen or mentioned since 2001) and The Lakeview Hotel. The biggest house in town in Fairwinds, which has had various owners over the years. A few miles from town is the rural Luther's Corners, where Emma Snyder's farm and pond are located. The local television station, WOAK, was owned by Kim Hughes and Lily Snyder for years, until Lily sold her portion of the station in 2005 to Byron "BJ" Green.

Tom Hughes is the town's current district attorney. Hal Munson has been the chief of Oakdale's police department since the mid-1990s.

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