When Groundhog Day turned Woodstock, Illinois, into Punxsutawney in the spring of 1992, the town's own residents walked the square as extras, and drawings by local schoolchildren hung on the movie's Gobbler's Knob.
Some shop owners objected to handing their downtown to the crew for so long, with streets closed and stores hard to reach. Filming went on into June.
By the mid-1990s residents were holding a Groundhog Day of their own: a breakfast for about 25 to 30 people and a prediction from a groundhog named Woodstock Willie.
In 1992, the complaints from the shops had not stopped the cameras, and in January 2026, the city council proclaimed February 2 as Groundhog Day in Woodstock.
A cinema and a courthouse in a road movie
In 1987 a tow truck hauled a burned-out rental car past the old McHenry County Courthouse in Woodstock, Illinois, its arches and tower in plain view.
The scene belonged to Planes, Trains and Automobiles, released that November, and the town got only a few short moments late in the trip, the front of Woodstock Theatre on Main Street among them.
Woodstock, the McHenry County seat northwest of Chicago, had grown up around a square laid out in 1844.
The courthouse went up facing it in 1857 and 1858, and the Opera House opened nearby in 1890.
Those moments brought the film's location manager to the square.
A few years later Harold Ramis needed a town to play Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in Groundhog Day.
His team had looked at dozens of towns in Wisconsin and Illinois, and in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Ramis came to want a central square rather than one shopping street.
The location manager suggested the square he remembered, and the production went to Woodstock.
Storefronts dressed as Punxsutawney
On March 16, 1992, the crew started turning downtown Woodstock into a Pennsylvania town in early February.
Business signs were swapped and fictional storefronts went up.
The Opera House became the Pennsylvanian Hotel, and a cafe was built inside a vacant shop at 108 Cass Street.
On Fremont Street, the porch of a private Victorian house from the mid-1890s became the Cherry Street Inn, where Phil Connors wakes up each morning.
The Woodstock Jewelers sign stayed where it hung, and the camera caught it.
The groundhog ceremony at Gobbler's Knob, held in the woods in the real Punxsutawney, moved onto the southwest corner of the square, where the production designer built a temporary pavilion and a fake hill, decorated with drawings by local schoolchildren.
Through April and May the square filled with equipment and extras, Woodstock residents among them.
The weather swung from real cold to spring warmth, and the cast stayed in winter clothes through all of it.
Some business owners objected to losing their downtown for so long, over closed streets and customers who couldn't easily reach the stores.
The shoot wrapped in Chicago in June 1992, and by the next year the storefronts were back to ordinary business.
A real Tip Top Cafe opens on Cass Street
Columbia Pictures released Groundhog Day in February 1993.
By that May the cafe that had been only a set at 108 Cass Street was serving for real: a Tip Top Cafe under red-and-white striped awnings.
The Tip Top didn't stay for long; later restaurants came and went at 108 Cass.
Woodstock also took the date for itself.
In the mid-1990s a group of residents held Woodstock's first Groundhog Days, a breakfast downstairs at the Courthouse Restaurant with a prediction from a groundhog named Woodstock Willie.
About 25 to 30 people came.
Markers went up where the film had worked: Ned's Corner at Cass and North Benton, where Phil keeps running into the insurance salesman Ned Ryerson, and a metal plaque with a shoe print at the curb where the puddle was staged.
Woodstock holds its own Groundhog Day
In January 2020 the film's star was back on the square to shoot a Jeep commercial based on the movie, with details of the 1992 set recreated, down to the Woodstock Jewelers sign.
The ad premiered during the Super Bowl on February 2, Groundhog Day.
In January 2026 the city council proclaimed February 2 Groundhog Day in Woodstock, with four days of events, a chili contest among them.
The 2027 festival has already been announced.
The Fremont Street house sold in August 2017 for $695,000, already a bed-and-breakfast.
It is now Cherry Tree Inn, which rents five rooms in the house and more at its Cherry Branch Guest House and takes reservations.
Woodstock Theatre runs eight screens, the Opera House stages plays and concerts, and a self-guided map leads visitors from plaque to plaque.
At 108 Cass Street, Mary's Mexican Grill is open in the corner where the Tip Top Cafe was built.
In 1992 Gobbler's Knob was a pavilion and a fake hill on the corner of the square, put up for one spring of filming.
Every February now, the town holds a Groundhog Day of its own, and Woodstock Willie makes the call.
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