Is Eureka inspired by a real place?

There actually is a town called Eureka in northern california. It's in Humboldt county. Look at a map and it's the point furthest west on the top

Richland, Wa was built as a company town for the Hanford Nuclear reservation as part of the Manhattan project. I am quite sure this is the Pacific Northwest town they are referencing, even though when watching their maps and such, it reflects Oregon. Check out Richland and Tri-Cities near Hanford, you may be surprised how the birth of Richland closely resembles Eureka USA. The city was totally built to support all the TOP scientists of the day. It was nothing before Hanford. There are supporting video's you can watch on YouTube regarding Richland's beginnings, how and why it was the fastest built city of its time.

https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/hanfordhistory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richland,_Washington

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/may/14/welcome-to-nuketown-usa-a-look-at-the-company-town/

<<< Making The First Nuke - Hanford Site: Manhattan Project

Enjoy

I grew up in Los Alamos, and half of the fun of the show is that it very closely resembles life in the "Atomic City." My dad is actually a nuclear physicist. So were most of my friends' dads.

There is likely no single real-world town that inspired the town of Eureka. It is arguably a mixture of two types of towns:

• A secretive government-run company town: Eureka is operated by a corporation called Global Dynamics (GD) that, due to the nature of the research done there, is overseen by the United States Department of Defense. The town's existence and location are therefore closely guarded secrets. This bears a great deal of similarity to the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was built in secret by the United States government for the Manhattan Project and controlled by the federal government until 1959.

• A small Northern-Pacific town: In a blog post on Idea Lab, show creator Jaime Paglia was asked and answered the following:

  Q: Have your own experiences in real life influenced the evolution of Eureka's plots, characters, and sci-tech ideas? If so, wanna share a few?

  A: On the character side, I think growing up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest was my biggest inspiration. There's something very unique about the dynamics of small town life. Everyone knows everyone's business. Connections run deep and when conflicts happen, there's nowhere to escape.

  In addition to the characters, there are a number of small-town features that the town of Eureka exhibits: a well-manicured main street filled with small independent local shops, numerous green spaces, statues, etc. As the Syfy site states, "A community was created to rival the most idyllic of America's small towns."

Oddly enough, the show appears to have inspired plans for a real-life Eureka-like city in New Mexico!

There were also plenty of towns like that in Russia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naukograd

I would say it probably most resembles Los Alamos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico

It is known to be a big contributor to the Manhattan Project and is also a very small town of only 12,000 residents. Nuclear waste is at some points, at least temporarily, stored there. The Department of Energy's primary research facility, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is located there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory