Buddy Ebsen had a long career. Very successful. Movies dating back to the 1930’s.
He did 274 episodes of Beverly Hillbillies and 178 of Barnaby Jones. He pretty much starred on TV for twenty years.
I thought that they explicitly referenced Tennessee.
My guess would have been Tennessee, just because it rhymes with Beverly.
AFAIK oil has never been found in hilly areas of states.
I grew up in the oil producing region of Arkansas. It’s 30 miles from the Louisiana border. Opposite end of the state from the Ozarks.
OK oilfields are in the flatlands too.
Jed hitting oil is a big leap in fiction. It is a clever idea to make the family instantly wealthy.
The show is a classic fish out of water comedy.
According to the Wikipedia page, Granny says on several occasions that she is from Tennessee.
She isn’t a Clampett. Granny is Jed’s mother in law.
IIRC it’s mentioned that she moved to live with the family.
WAG maybe to help after Jed’s wife died?
Maybe the former, but Dogpatch USA did not open until 1968. I remember going there as a teenager, as it was not far from my grandmother’s place.
I always assumed the Beverly Hillbillies were from Arkansas just because they seemed so much like my mother’s family. Even have a photograph of my great-grandfather in Arkansas, taken around the turn of the 20th century, posing in his hillbilly garb, holding his huntin’ rifle and surrounded by his coon dogs. He could have been Jed Clampett’s best buddy.
As well as Snuffy Smith, who dates back to the 1930s. In fact, “The Beverly Hillbillies” really was the last hurrah of the “backward hillbilly” genre. The eternal duel between the moonshiner and the “revenooer” got the Hollywood treatment as far back as the silent film era during Prohibition, and the stock comedy theme that emerged in the 1930s was possibly sparked when modernization efforts such as the Tennessee Valley Authority focused on the region. In other words, the process of coming to the national attention and being stereotyped went hand in hand. Something similar had happened to the western cowboy in the 19th century when the dime novel (written for folks back east) transformed poor, hardworking wranglers living on the fringes of civilization into a meme.
How would Flatt and Scruggs have competed for Pearl’s affections if she’d been in Arkansas? They were connected with TN/KY. It doesn’t make much sense for Jed and company to have lived anywhere near Hooterville. You can’t have huge farms in the hills.
For some reason, I am absolutely certain they are from Missouri. However, I have no proof and no cites. So I’m sure this post is very helpful. 
I believe Cousin Pearl (Jethro’s mother), and Kate Bradley were supposed to be cousins, due to both characters being played by Bea Benaderet.
I’ll note that Wikipedia lists four real places called Bugtussle or Bug Tussle, in four different states, all of which are reasonable candidates.
Personally, I always assumed the BHBs were from Texas, because of the “Texas Tea” line in the song.
On another note, can anyone hear the word “mountaineer” without the theme song popping into your head? There’s a Mercury Mountaineer that parks near my house and every time I see it, yep, there goes the damn song!
I think it’s because they featured Silver Dollar City so prominently in a later episode or two. But I and everyone I knew just figured that was some sort of tourism arrangement with the city. Of course, those mountains do span the Missouri/Arkansas state line, so it’s not out of the question for the clan to span two states.
No fucking way it was Texas. I was in Texas, and no one ever thought that’s where it was. It was always “the Ozarks.” “Texas tea” was just slang for oil, because Texas has so much of it. It was never meant to imply they were from Texas.
Seconded. I grew up in Texas and always pictured them as Okies, without knowing about the Ozarks part.
Actually, Donna Douglas was in the 1958 movie Li’l Abner, but not as Daisy Mae. She was a girl in the chorus and you can spot her when Mammy Yokum addresses a line to her. I don’t remember if Donna had any lines herself.
I’d always assumed Arkansas and the Ozarks, too. I’m not sure why, other than the accent. It really does sound hillbilly. But I do know that, oddly enough, the hillbilly accent here and in West Virginia is quite similar. I saw a video, and could have sworn I was listening to one of my grandparents (who have always lived here in the Ozarks) or one of their friends talking.
Jed isn’t that authentic sounding, but he sounds closer to hillbilly than Southern to me.
I know there’s not much oil in Arkansas … in the real world, but there could be in TV Land. Some previously unknown deposit. No way were they Okies. They were Ozark Mountain hillbillies, of the type I personally am descended from. I mentioned my great-grandfather already, and my great-grandmother was a dead ringer for Granny Clampett. I say Arkansas or maybe just across the state line in Missouri. Oklahoma is as ludicrous as Texas for a suggestion and suggests a lack of proper viewing of the show.
A (not entirely un-)related question–how old are Jethro and Ellie Mae supposed to be? Not the actors, but the characters themselves? Aren’t they supposed to be teenagers?
Nitpick: Granny Moses. Granny’s real name was Daisy Moses
I wonder how many people ever figured out the inside joke?