Miskatonic River

The Miskatonic River is a fictional river in Massachusetts, created by H. P. Lovecraft. It links two of the most important settings in Lovecraft Country--Arkham and Dunwich--and is the source of the name of Miskatonic University.
==In Lovecraft's Fiction==
The first allusion to the Miskatonic River in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction occurs in "The Picture in the House", written in 1920, when the narrator says, "I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data."
The river itself probably appears for the first time in 1926's "The Silver Key", which says of protagonist Randolph Carter:Then he knew he must go into the past and merge himself with old things, and day after day he thought of the hills to the north where haunted Arkham and the rushing Miskatonic and the lonely rustic homestead of his people lay.
In the brooding fire of autumn Carter took the old remembered way past graceful lines of rolling hill and stone-walled meadow, distant vale and hanging woodland, curving road and nestling farmstead, and the crystal windings of the Miskatonic, crossed here and there by rustic bridges of wood or stone.The river also shows up in "The Strange High House in the Mist", written in November 1926, where it serves to establish that the titular house exists in the same setting as Arkham and Kingsport from "The Festival". "[N]orth of archaic Kingsport," the story notes, there is "a bleak point jutting in limitless space, for there the coast turns sharp where the great Miskatonic pours out of the plains past Arkham, bringing woodland legends and little quaint memories of New England’s hills." Later the character Thomas Olney reasons that the house "must be tenanted by people who reached it from inland along the easier ridge beside the Miskatonic’s estuary."
The river plays a similar connective role in 1928's "The Dunwich Horror", linking Arkham to the newly introduced Dunwich: "The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises."
The river makes its final appearance in Lovecraft in "Dreams in the Witch-House", written in 1932, where it is the location of an ominous island in Arkham visited by Walter Gilman: "He also rowed out twice to the ill-regarded island in the river, and made a sketch of the singular angles described by the moss-grown rows of grey standing stones whose origin was so obscure and immemorial."
==In Other Works==
A Miskatonic River features in several works by horror giant Stephen King, perhaps most notably It, where it acts as a meeting place for the main characters as children.
Category:Locations Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Regions/Territories