In Elevation, King gives readers a glimpse of some of the streets of Castle Rock, often as a running route. Early in the novella, Scott Carey looks out the window of his house to see Deirdre McComb and Missy Donaldson “coming out of their driveway and turning onto View Drive” (19), then running past his house, accompanied by their two dogs, who have a bad habit of doing their business in Scott’s yard. 

After Scott defends Deirdre and Missy in Patsy’s Diner on Main Street, he walks down the street, checking out the windows of the local stores to see which ones have the Turkey Trot posters that feature Deirdre’s picture. As King writes, Scott “walked slowly down Main Street, looking in shop windows as he went … He saw the Turkey Trot poster in the window of Castle Rock Computer Sales & Service, but nowhere else until he reached the Book Nook, a tiny building at the end of the street” (40-41). Many people in Castle Rock are prejudiced against Deirdre and Missy, unwilling to accept the married lesbian restaurateurs, and as Scott walks down Main Street, this homophobia and exclusion are on clear, visible display. 

The most extended description of the streets of Castle Rock, however, is in the route of the Turkey Trot itself: 

The course was a rough loop. Down View Drive to Route 117 was the first three kilometers. The Bowie Stream covered bridge was the halfway point. Then along Route 119, which became Bannerman Road once it crossed the municipal town line. The tenth kilometer included Hunter’s Hill, sometimes known as Runner’s Heartbreak. It was so steep the kids often went tobogganing there on snowdays, picking up fearsome speed but kept safe by the plowed banks. The last two kilometers were along Castle Rock’s Main Street, which would be lined with cheering spectators, not to mention camera crews from all three of the Portland TV stations.” (75)  

This route takes the runners all around Castle Rock, highlighting both the town’s history—in the road named to commemorate Sheriff George Bannerman of The Dead Zone (1979) and Cujo (1981)—and the contemporary conflicts that divide the town’s residents on Main Street. Chapter Four, “The Turkey Trot,” shifts from the map-style overview of the route to Scott’s experience of the run, from the “double curve” (88) of Route 117 to “a series of low but ascending hills” (90). As he hits the homestretch, he can see Main Street from a distance, a different view that his sidewalk level consideration of the posters in the windows, with “twenty or so businesses on either side hung with bunting, the Catholic church and the Methodist one facing off like holy gunslingers, the slant parking (every space taken), the clogged sidewalks, and the town’s two stoplights” (94). Scott catches up with Deirdre near the finish line, helps her up when she falls, and they end the race at the Tin Bridge. 

The race’s photo finish changes everything and while downtown was the previously the site of conflict and exclusion, every table in Holy Frijole is soon filled and when Deirdre—as the winner of the Turkey Trot—lights the Christmas tree in the town square, there is “a roar of approval” (116), Christmas carols, and enthusiastic applause. The streets of Castle Rock have not been redrawn, but their meaning has been actively negotiated and the town itself has changed for the better.

[Page numbers are from the 2018 hardcover Scribner edition of Elevation]