Bayport, home of The Hardy Boys
The Tower Treasure was the first book to feature The Hardy Boys. The brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy, were the creations of a number of Stratemeyer Syndicate authors. They were the offspring of a well-known retired New York detective who operated as an independent investigator. The boys took on some of their father's cases themselves while helping him in others. They were high school students who resided in Bayport, on Barmet Bay, and possessed a speedboat, an iceboat, motorcycles, and their own car, all of which they paid for with money they received as incentives. It was never made clear where Barmet Bay or Bayport were. The original 38 novels were reworked in the 1950s and 1960s (which made them terrible), but no new hints as to Bayport's location were provided.
It is a city on a bay that is fed by a river, and the bay has islands and cliffs close to where it empties into the ocean. It has a harbor, an airport, and a train station from where it takes roughly two hours to go to New York. According to that, it appears to be in Connecticut, New Jersey, or Long Island. In reality, Long Island has a Bayport. However, the 38 original novels of the series, all of which are out-of-print and hard to locate, accurately describe the fictional Bayport, and the real Bayport is quite similar to that description. One of the reasons why the Hardy Boys Series was so popular in the second half of the 20th century was because of the wonderful haven kids could escape to in those novels' Bayport on dreary summer afternoons.
- Location: Washington County, Minnesota
