Sidewinder, Colorado, is a mountain town near Bluebell Campground, where the True Knot conceals itself behind a business that locals regard as an unexplained drain on the local economy. The town’s hopes for renewed commerce and its mistaken understanding of the campground’s purpose frame Dan Torrance’s realization that the True Knot is close by.

Setting and Approach

A sign welcomes visitors to Sidewinder as the “TOP OF AMERICA,” a claim the narration qualifies: the town is not quite at the top, but close. About twenty miles from where the Eastern Slope becomes the Western, a dirt road branches north from the main highway toward Bluebell Campground. Its rustic welcome sign presents the place as an inviting destination, though the road and campground are often closed.

Local Expectations and the Campground

Sidewinder’s residents would prefer Bluebell Campground to open whenever the mountain roads are not snowbound. They miss the business the Overlook Hotel once brought and had hoped the campground might partly replace it. They also understand that campers spend less than the hotel guests who formerly supported the local economy. Since that anticipated benefit has not materialized, the prevailing local explanation is that the campground belongs to a wealthy corporation using it as a tax haven and accepting it as a designated money-loser.

That suspicion is partly right about the property’s function as a haven, but wrong about who it shelters. Bluebell Campground belongs to the True Knot; when the group is there, its members’ recreational vehicles occupy the large parking lot. The business that appears merely unprofitable to Sidewinder is therefore cover for a hidden presence nearby.

Discovery and Narrative Significance

Abra gives Dan the location while trying to identify where the True Knot has gathered. She is uncertain whether the campground is called Bluebird or Bluebell, but identifies the nearby town as Sidewinder and mentions the Sam’s Supermarket there. She also says that Rose the Hat and the True Knot are at the campground. The specific town and store turn a vague psychic discovery into a place Dan can recognize and act upon.

The name resolves a question that has been haunting Dan since Dick Hallorann spoke through Eleanor Ouellette’s dead mouth. Dan had asked where the “empty devils” were; hearing Abra name the campground and town, he understands the answer. Sidewinder thus links the apparently ordinary local landscape to the True Knot’s concealed refuge and to the childhood memory through which Dan makes sense of the revelation.