In The Reivers the "driving park" where Otis and Mr. Binford went to bet on a race is probably the Montgomery Park race track (108). Horse and harness racing on a one-mile oval track began there in 1852. In 1906, when the state legislature outlawed gambling, the track was closed down.
The Reivers gets slightly ahead of history when the characters at Miss Reba's talk about the city zoo "in Overton Park" (108). The Memphis zoo is in that park, but didn't open until 1906, the year after the story takes place.
Lucius' description of downtown Memphis in The Reivers is based on his previous visit to the city. It includes "the tall buildings, the stores, the hotels" (94). He mentions three real hotels by name: the Gaston, the Peabody and the Gayoso. On that earlier trip Lucius and his family stayed at the Gayoso, a Memphis landmark since 1843. It finally closed in 1962, the year The Reivers was published. Based on census figures, in 1905 the city's population would have been around 120,000.
In The Reivers "Birdie Watts's" is "across the street" from Miss Reba's (107). Though no one says so explicitly, it is clearly another brothel, one of at least several more in Memphis' famed red light district.
After selling his store and ferry on the Tallahatchie River, Wylie moved four miles south "and became a farmer" (72). The Reivers mentions that Lucius and his father hunt birds there the Christmas after the story takes place. (Wylie seems to be the same character as the man named Wyott in The Town, but that novel does not mention his farm.)
Ballenbaugh's, the place where Lucius and Boon spend the first night of their trip in The Reivers, has had a very colorful past. The river crossing it stands at was first settled by a man named Wylie, who was shown the location by the Chickasaw Indians (71). From his "peaceful one-room combined residence and store," he ran a ferry that carried freight across the river; the road north from Jefferson was built "as straight" to Wyott's as it could be made to connect the town to Memphis (72).
Winbush's place, "a solid eight miles from town," is probably a farm, but it is mentioned in The Reivers as the place where "Uncle Cal Bookwright's [moonshine] whiskey" can be bought for two dollars a gallon (13). In other Yoknapatawpha fictions there are Bookwrights in Frenchman's Bend, so we are putting this location in that part of the county - but that is simply an assumption.
This is the farm "six miles from town" where the "new girl" that Ludus is courting lives (10). The Reivers calls her the "daughter (or wife)" of a "tenant," which means the land is owned by one of the county's white proprietors and worked by sharecroppers (10).
Although it's inside the town limits, the place where Grandfather and Grandmother Priest live in The Reivers seems like a fairly large estate. It includes a carriage house and lot. When Lucius describes the drive from there to the Edmonds' place, he describes passing through the Square on the way, which puts this location on the town's southern edge, probably more or less in the same part of town as the Compson estate occupies in other texts. As the story-teller Lucius casually mentions the fact that "what was Grandfather's house is now [i.e.
