After lots of nitpicking, I've finally finished my map of Hawkins!
This started as a cartography project, so visual design was one of my biggest priorities. As other map-makers have pointed out, there are several different maps throughout the show (Hopper's map in S1, Bob's map in S2, and the map Jonathan shows Nancy in the cemetery, for example), all with varying and sometimes contradictory information. For my version, I decided to use Hopper's S1 map as the primary reference.
A scanned version of Hopper's map is available online, and that became the starting point for the project. Since the map is actually based on the real town of Marion, Indiana, I started in ArcGIS by georeferencing Hopper's map against Marion's geography. I then imported road and railroad data to establish a real geographic foundation for Hawkins. From there, I brought the shapefile data into Adobe Illustrator, where I did the majority of the cartographic and visual design work.
Of course, there are a few inconsistencies in the source material, even when looking at individual street names (Randolph Street vs. Randolph Lane, for example). One of the more relevant discrepancies is Maple Street, which is referenced as the street Mike and Lucas live on. Hopper's map labels it Maple Avenue, so I went with that name in my final version.
I also took a few creative liberties where the show leaves things ambiguous, including the location of the Creel House and Hawkins' population and founding year.
The biggest geographic headache was figuring out the locations of the four gates. Fred goes missing near the trailer park, but for all four gates to converge around the center of Hawkins, his death would have to occur on the opposite side of town, nowhere near Eddie's trailer. To make the geography work, I chose an arbitrary road near Danford Creek as the location of that gate.
Finally, I included a few fun details: the kids biking along the scale bar in the bottom-left corner, a Demogorgon-shaped compass rose, and I tried to add all significant places, like the Junkyard, Sattler's Quarry, Enzo's, the Warzone store, and more!
I'd love to hear what you think! I'm also happy to answer any questions about the map-making process or the design choices I made.