The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The street in front of Mrs. Hait's house is located on the edge of town. The text suggests that numerous houses line the street, including the one across from Hait's with the typically Southern veranda and rocking chairs where she and Het sit while her house burns down. In other nearby houses the "neighborhood gathered to look on from behind adjacent window curtains and porches" (254).

The Merchants' and Farmers' Bank, sometimes also called "Sartoris' Bank," was founded by Old Bayard Sartoris and is located on Courthouse Square. In the earlier Flags in the Dust, I.O. Snopes' cousin Flem Snopes is the bank's vice-president; how he acquired that prestigious position is told in the later volumes of the Snopes trilogy.

The "fenced pasture" where I.O. Snopes keeps the mules he sells has to be somewhere close to Jefferson (252). When I.O. drives the animals there from the train station, he passes near - sometimes too near - Mannie Hait's house.

I.O. Snopes' mule herds arrive in box cars at the Jefferson railroad station. The station, painted in a "serviceable and time-defying color" (253), is mentioned in numerous Faulkner texts and a main entry and exit point to and from Jefferson.

I.O. Snopes buys his mules "at the Memphis market" and brings them to Jefferson to sell - or to die on the railroad track (252).

The site of multiple railway accidents, the "blind curve of the railroad just out of town" (252) is also the location where Mr. Hait died.

Jefferson is the county seat of Yoknapatawpha, and Courthouse Square is the physical and social center of Jefferson. We use it as the location for a number of events in the story that are not otherwise attached to a specific place, such as the time an unnamed man - "a town wag" - sends I.O. Snopes a train schedule (252).