One of the hallmarks of Stephen King’s writing is his use of the real-life Maine landscape as a framework to which he adds his own fictional towns, like Derry, Castle Rock, and Jerusalem’s Lot, firmly situating the horrors of his novels within a recognizable and familiar landscape. 

Early in ‘Salem’s Lot,, King provides readers with a meticulously detailed description of Jerusalem’s Lot, including its history, community, and traditions, before concluding that “Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there” (44). As part of this introduction to Jerusalem’s Lot, King provides a textual map of the town, beginning with the fact that “Brock Street crossed Jointner Avenue dead center and at right angles, and the township itself was nearly circular (although a little flat on the east, where the boundary was the meandering Royal River). On a map, the two main roads gave the town an appearance very much like a telescopic sight” (40). He then methodically makes his way through the town, quadrant by quadrant, describing the distinguishing characteristics and key landmarks of each: the hilly northwest section which is home to Marsten House, the open land and Royal River in the northeast, Griffen Farms in the southeast, and the trailers and honky-tonk in the southwest (41-42). These descriptions are detailed and immersive, drawing the reader into the world of Jerusalem’s Lot spatially as well as narratively. 

There are two notable maps of Jerusalem’s Lot well worth considering as we navigate King’s doomed town. The first of these maps was created for the Cemetery Dance deluxe special edition of ‘Salem’s Lot, published in 2016. 

Cemetery Dance has published several special editions of King’s work, including IT (in 2011), Carrie (in 2014), and The Shining (in 2017). These special editions are limited-run, featuring beautiful new artwork and additional materials, such as new introductions by King, deleted scenes, and connected stories. Cemetery Dance is also the exclusive publisher for several King works, including The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem (2013) which introduces King’s iconic villain Randall Flagg, and the Gwendy trilogy, which includes Gwendy’s Button Box (2017) and Gwendy’s Final Task (2022), which King co-authored with Richard Chizmar, who founded and runs Cemetery Dance. (Richard Chizmar is the sole author of the second book in the trilogy, Gwendy’s Magic Feather [2019]). 

The map of Jerusalem’s Lot by artist David Palumbo that accompanies the Cemetery Dance deluxe special edition of ‘Salem’s Lot is a black and white line drawing that meticulously follows King’s description from the novel, with Brock and Jointner Streets crossing in its center and each quadrant clearly delineated. The map relies almost exclusively on images to tell its story and orient the reader, and aside from the identification of the town’s name in the upper left corner and a couple of compass points, the drawings of buildings, streets, and landscapes speak for themselves. This is a map ideally suited for those who already know the town’s story, who will feel a spark of recognition as they survey its details. For example, the Marsten House is deeply shadowed, keeping its secrets even while clearly and prominently displayed, much like the house looms over the town but remains ultimately unknowable to those who live in the Lot. Harmony Hill Cemetery is partially depicted in the map’s upper left section, with its incomplete representation here echoing the blurry line between civilization and wilderness, as well as the dark deeds that take place there but remain hidden and unseen. The woods in the upper right quadrant of the map are marked by dark shadows, remnants of the long-ago fire there. The map focuses on the collective landmarks of the community—the Marsten House, churches and schools, the stores that line the Lot’s downtown—lending a visual identity to the town as a communal whole rather than on its individual homes or residents. Through this mapping, Jerusalem’s Lot becomes knowable and navigable, even as the reader remains aware of how much is going on beneath the surface, the secrets that remain unrepresentable. 

An alternate mapping of Jerusalem’s Lot comes from Sarah Stimpson, a graphic designer for film and television, whose work includes the Hulu series Castle Rock (2018-2019). Based on King’s geographic descriptions, ‘Salem’s Lot and Castle Rock aren’t particularly close to one another—’Salem’s Lot is near Cumberland in the southeast part of the state, while Castle Rock is further north and maybe just a bit west, depending on which map you’re looking at—though Castle Rock reworked King’s geography to make the towns adjacent to one another in the series’ second season, which features a major plot concerning the Lot and the Marsten House. Stimpson created a map of the Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot area, accompanied by sketches of key landmarks on one side and a larger state map to provide geographic context on the other, which can be seen here in the background of a scene in the Emporium Galorium with Pop Merrill (Tim Robbins). 

Where the Cemetery Dance map of Jerusalem’s Lot is artistically rendered, this map is more practical, particularly in the detailed, color-coded charting of the town in the inset middle panel. But like the Cemetery Dance map, there’s much more going on in Jerusalem’s Lot than can be effectively represented on the map. This map identifies plots and property lines—which are a source of significant tension in Castle Rock’s second season—but it doesn’t reveal anything about the underground crypt Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan) falls into or its connection to the Marsten House, just one of the town’s many buried secrets. 

These two maps provide readers with opportunities to spatially situate themselves within two different versions of Jerusalem’s Lot, revealing geographic details and providing insight into some of the connections that radiate through the town. However, as both maps also demonstrate, there are representational limitations: interconnections that run beneath the surface, secrets that keep to the shadows, and horrors that cannot be charted.