Mapping Kerouac's On The Road

On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer  Jack Kerouac , based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. Between 1947 and 1950, while writing what would become  The Town and the City  (1950), Kerouac engaged in the road adventures that would form On the Road. [3]  Kerouac carried small notebooks, in which much of the text was written as the eventful span of road trips unfurled. He started working on the first of several versions of the novel as early as 1948, based on experiences during his first long road trip in 1947.

Below is an interactive map listing every location visited by Sal Paradise, the protagonist from On the Road. Clicking on any pin will list Paradise's location, as well as a textual reference to it, within the novel.

Also, because On the Road is separated in to separate parts, each part with its respective locations is color coded:

Part 1 follows the green line from NY to Denver, CO to California to NY.

Part 2 follows the yellow line from NY to New Orleans, LA to San Francisco, CA.

Part 3 follows the red line from Denver, CO to San Francisco, CA to Denver, CO to NY.

Part 4 follows the blue line from NY to Denver, CO to Mexico.

By mapping Kerouac's On the Road, readers are able to visualize the routes traveled by Sal Paradise in a way that they cannot by reading the printed word alone.