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The McFarthest spot
Strange Maps reports:
Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s...If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you could fly, however, it’d be only 107 miles).
They have a good map to go with it; I believe, by the way, that he means the continental U.S. and thus he is excluding Alaska. I would have expected the Nevada desert to win out.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 27, 2009 at 08:07 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
Contiguous US. Alaska is on the continent.
Posted by: Jody at Sep 27, 2009 8:55:16 AM
When I saw the map, my initial reaction was, gee, this looks a lot like a map of the interstate highway system, at least in the western half of the U.S. And indeed, if you plunk a highway map down beside it, the resemblance is pretty striking. There are a lot of McD's, it would seem, that are there to feed hungry travelers. And why not? Food on the road, just like at home.
This explains why you're never that far from a McD in the southwest deserts---the deserts may be chock full of empty, but they've sure got interstates running through 'em. And where there's an interstate...
Posted by: Howard at Sep 27, 2009 11:22:57 AM
My recollection that the farthest spot from an interstate highway is in Wyoming. Nevada is just not remote.
Posted by: Highgamma at Sep 27, 2009 11:23:15 AM
Nevada is just not remote.
But a quick look at the map seems to show that two of the four biggest McD-less areas are in Nevada, with the third being somewhere around the Idaho/Montana border
Posted by: Careless at Sep 27, 2009 11:53:19 AM
Most of the land in Nevada is government owned. If there were a remote McFar spot in Nevada, you probably would not legally be able to visit it.
Posted by: JohnW at Sep 27, 2009 1:39:50 PM
It's striking how, from about the longitude of Fort Worth to the West Coast there is so little civilization. Except for Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, the only McDonald's appear to be on interstates.
Posted by: mw at Sep 27, 2009 2:33:08 PM
Incidentally, many towns in Alaska are much closer to a Subway than they are to a McDonald's. That would also be an interesting map to see.
Posted by: Sean P. at Sep 27, 2009 6:12:43 PM
Since Area 51 is in Nevada, there may be a secret McD's that we don't know about. For the airmen and aliens.
Posted by: Ben at Sep 27, 2009 7:48:52 PM
The reason many towns in Alaska are closer to a Subway than a McDonalds is because there are a lot more of them. The pattern applieas elsewhere in the USA. There are 20,000 Subways versus 13,000 McDonalds.
Subway is a cheaper franchise to open. I'm not sure if that's the whole reason they are more popular, but it must have something to do with it.
Strange that we pick the fast food outlet with fewer locations to be our symbol of American fast food excess.
Posted by: Bob Knaus at Sep 27, 2009 7:58:48 PM
@Bob Knaus
Good point. I was shocked by the minimum capital required to open a McDonalds.
Posted by: Gary Peeples at Sep 27, 2009 8:35:28 PM
Nevada comes close to the title; it looks to me that if you closed down a single McDonald's in Ely Nevada, the McFarthest spot would swing around to those parts by a pretty far margin.
Although I'm just eyeballing the graph and comparing it with the Google Maps results for "McDonald's" so I might be making a mistake.
Posted by: UserGoogol at Sep 28, 2009 4:59:22 AM
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/07/dont-blame-canada.php
"MC"Donalds. Draw your own conclusion.
Posted by: Andrew at Sep 28, 2009 9:23:02 AM
I wonder what the same map would look like for Starbuck's.
Posted by: nelsonal at Sep 28, 2009 10:16:39 AM
I seem to remember a stretch of route 98 in west Florida around Apalachicola where it was possible to drive 100 miles without seeing a McDonald's.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Sep 28, 2009 10:19:10 AM
if you closed down a single McDonald's in Ely Nevada
And since the mine closed down about ten years ago, that McD´s is surviving on the economy of nothing but the state prison in East Ely.
Posted by: Brian at Sep 28, 2009 11:32:27 AM
