The Hawkins map: every location in the show, placed back on the plan
Universe · Hawkins · Geography
No complete map of Hawkins has ever been released by the production: everything is pieced back together from the show itself. In this article: Mirkwood road between the Byers' house and the Wheelers', the national lab at the edge of the woods, downtown and its storefronts, Starcourt mall, the cursed places season by season, the rift that cuts the town in two in 1986 and the real filming locations. By the end, you will be able to draw that map at home.
Hawkins does not exist, and yet you can draw it. Over five seasons, the show has planted enough clues — signs, roads, bike routes, police maps — to place the lab, the quarry, the lake, and the mall in relation to one another. Here is what the map really says, and what it deliberately leaves blurry.
The essentials
- The town: fictional, located in Indiana, Roane County
- The starting point: Mirkwood Road, between the Byers' house and the Wheelers'
- The central location: the national laboratory, at the edge of the woods
- The season 3 location: Starcourt, the brand-new mall
- What is missing: no complete map has ever been released by the production
- The landmark of the ending: the rift that splits the town in two in 1986
Contents
- A town that no map shows in full
- Mirkwood, the road where it all begins
- The lab, the point where everything starts
- Downtown, one street and a few storefronts
- The mall, the town that changes shape
- The cursed places, season by season
- When the map tears
- Where the town was really filmed
- Recreating the map at home
A town no map shows in full
There is no complete map of Hawkins. The production has never published one, and the few documents visible on screen — the police station board, the kids' treasure hunt map, the army's radar screen — each show only a piece of it. Everything else is deduced from the trips: the bikes take so many minutes to get from the middle school to the Byers house, the patrol car crosses town in one night, and the woods always start at the end of the same path.
It is a writing choice, not an oversight. A town whose map you knew would stop being unsettling: distances have to stay elastic for a child to disappear ten minutes from home. So fans have reconstructed maps from the episodes, and those maps all look alike on four fixed points.
to the north, isolated in the woods, fenced off, linked to town by a single road
a main street, the police station, the drugstore, the movie theater
rows of suburban houses, with the Wheelers' basement at the heart of it
to the west and the south, with the quarry and the lake on the edge
The town's poster, to pin above the desk.
In the shopWomen's Hawkins Middle School tank top29,90 €See the product
Mirkwood, the road where it all begins
The name is on no road sign: it is the one the kids give to a junction of forest roads, borrowed from the dark wood of a Tolkien novel. That is where Will disappears on November 6, 1983, riding home from a role-playing session, and it is the first place the show locates precisely — because the search has to start somewhere.
Mirkwood connects the suburban neighborhood to the Byers house, at the edge of the woods. On the fan map, it's the line that separates the inhabited town from the wild one: everything that comes from the other world passes through there, up to the gate opened in a tree trunk in 1984.
A fan detailThe kids name the places with their gamer vocabulary. Mirkwood for the woods, the “Gate” for the rift: the show lets the kids christen the map before the adults do.
The lab, the point everything starts from
The federal complex sits to the north, behind a fence, at the end of a road that leads nowhere else. Presented as an energy research center, it is where Dr. Brenner's program is run and where the first gate opens, in 1983. Its position matters: far enough that nobody goes near it, close enough that what escapes from it reaches town in a few hours.
The show uses it as a magnetic pole. In 1984, the tunnels dug under the fields converge on it. It closes after that date, then reopens under military command three years later, when the town goes under quarantine. On every reconstructed map, it occupies the same corner: up top, off to the side, connected by a single line.
| Place | Where it is | Seasons |
|---|---|---|
| The national laboratory | to the north, in the woods, behind a fence | 1, 2, 4, 5 |
| Sattler Quarry | to the southwest, at the edge of the forest | 1, 2 |
| Mirkwood forest | between the Wheelers' neighborhood and the Byers' house | 1 |
| Hopper's cabin | deep in the woods, with no neighbors | 2, 3, 4 |
| Lover's Lake | south of town | 4 |
Downtown, one street and a few storefronts
The heart of Hawkins fits on one street: the police station, the drugstore where Joyce works, the movie theater, the library, a few shops and a parking lot. It is the set for the daytime scenes, the one where rumors travel and where residents run into each other. In 1985, the opening of a brand-new mall on the outskirts empties that street of its customers — the show makes it a subject in its own right, with boarded-up storefronts and an accommodating mayor.
Two leisure spots count as much as the stores. The Palace Arcade, the video game hall where the rivalry over high scores plays out, and later the video store where Steve and Robin work, which serves as headquarters for the 1986 investigation. Both work like village squares for teenagers.
-
The police station
Hopper's office, the missing persons board, the coffee machine
-
Melvald's
Joyce's drugstore, and the magnets falling off fridge doors
-
The Palace Arcade
the arcade, its cabinets and the high score signed MadMax
-
The video store
Steve and Robin's counter, and the tapes shelved by genre
The mall, the town changing shape
Built on the outskirts, the mall becomes in a single season the center of gravity of Hawkins: teenagers work there, hang out there and do their shopping there, while Soviet engineers dig beneath it to reopen a gate. The building burns on July 4, 1985, and the public version calls it a fire. On the map, it leaves a hole: a wasteland that the following seasons go around.
That shift from the center to the outskirts is one of the show's truest ideas about the 1980s. The town does not grow, it empties on one side to fill up on the other, and the main set changes place every season without the overall map moving.
The ice cream parlorScoops Ahoy, with its sailor uniforms, occupied the second floor. It is one of the few businesses in Hawkins whose exact location inside a building is known.
The figure of the monster that prowls between two streets.
In the shopSet of 16 figures, the Hawkins party74,90 €See the product
The cursed places, season by season
Each season adds a place the town would rather forget. The municipal pool and the abandoned steelworks, in 1985. The Creel house, Victorian, empty since 1959, where most of the following season plays out. The Forest Hills trailer park, with the trailer where Vecna's first victim dies, then the one where Max lives. And the lake, to the south, whose bottom hides a rift.
These places have one thing in common: they are all on the edge of town, neither downtown nor deep in the forest. The show plants its gates to the other world there, as if danger could only open up in the places nobody takes care of.
| Cursed place | What happens there | Season |
|---|---|---|
| The Creel house | three murders in 1959, then Vecna's lair | 4 and 5 |
| Forest Hills | the trailer of the first victim of 1986, Max's trailer | 4 |
| Lover's Lake | the gate underwater, known as the Watergate | 4 |
| The abandoned steelworks | the manhunt of summer 1985 | 3 |
| The community pool | the lifeguard's chair, and a disappearance | 3 |
When the map tears
At the end of season 4, four gates open at the four places where Vecna killed, and the town splits open over several kilometers. The rift cuts through neighborhoods, slices streets in two, swallows houses. The press calls it an earthquake. For the first time, the map of Hawkins really changes: it is no longer a set being moved, it is the ground opening up.
Eighteen months later, the town lives under military quarantine, fenced off, with checkpoints on the roads. Geography becomes a stake: you no longer move around freely, every trip goes through tunnels, sewers or a pirate radio station. The last season plays out on the map the four previous ones patiently drew.
- The first gatethe trailer in the Forest Hills park
- The second onethe lake, to the south
- The thirdthe junkyard, to the east
- The fourththe Creel house, in the center
Where the town was filmed, for real
Hawkins does not exist, but its locations do. The series was shot mainly in Georgia, around Atlanta: a small town whose main street served as the downtown, a former mall converted into a set for the summer of 1985, forests and lakes an hour's drive away. Several of these places can be visited, and some businesses have kept the signs.
It is the funniest gap between the map and reality: the Indiana town everyone thinks they know is an assembly of Georgia towns, filmed dozens of kilometers apart. On the reconstructed map, two neighboring buildings can be, in real life, a forty-minute drive away from each other.
Rebuilding the map at home
For a fan who wants to put Hawkins on the wall, there are three approaches. The first, the most faithful, is to start from the four fixed points — the lab to the north, downtown in the middle, the forest to the west, the lake to the south — and to place the rest as the episodes go. The second is to reuse the map the kids draw themselves in the series, with their role-playing names. The third, the most decorative, mixes the two and adds the dates.
The show's posters often work that way: a stylized map, red markers on the key locations, and period typography. It is the simplest way to have Hawkins in front of you without betraying what the show has left in the dark — because half the pleasure comes precisely from not knowing exactly where the forest ends.
The Hawkins T-shirt, for those who grew up there.
In the shopWhite Hawkins Middle School 1983 sweater75,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
Where is Hawkins?
In Indiana, in the heart of the American Midwest, in a county called Roane. The town is entirely fictional: no locality in the state bears that name.
Is there a complete map of Hawkins?
No. The production has never released an overall layout; only fragments appear on screen, like the board at the police station. The maps you find online are fan reconstructions.
What is Mirkwood?
The name the kids give to a junction of forest roads, borrowed from Tolkien. That is where Will disappears on November 6, 1983, between the suburban neighborhood and the Byers house.
Where is the lab?
North of town, isolated in the woods behind a fence, at the end of a single road. It is the point everything starts from: the first rift opens there in 1983.
Where was the series filmed?
Mainly in Georgia, around Atlanta. Several sets can be visited, even if two buildings that stand side by side on screen can be forty minutes apart by car.
What became of the mall?
It burns on July 4, 1985 after an underground explosion, and the public version speaks of a fire. The following seasons skirt around the wasteland it leaves behind.
Where do the four gates open?
At the four places where Vecna killed in 1986: the trailer park, the lake, the junkyard and the Creel house. Their simultaneous opening splits the town over several kilometers.
Can you visit Hawkins?
Not Hawkins, but its locations: the main street, the high school, the lake and several houses were filmed in small Georgia towns that welcome visitors today.
