Longest Routes for Smaller Areas

The Twelve Mile Circle audience loves little puzzles. Knowing that, I thought I might try to fold a couple of related ideas that have fascinated lately into a single entry.

First Dimension

I looked back to one of the more popular 12MC concepts, the Longest Google Maps Routes. I published that about eighteen months ago and it continues to be a popular page. Various social media and aggregator sites “rediscover” it from time-to-time, giving it new life. It’s quieted down a bit since the comments period closed after a year. Unfortunately I’ve had to specify an open comment period for all articles to try to tame a never-ending torrent of spam.

Second Dimension

The second related page focused on my journey to Kentucky last summer. Back then I noted the tremendous amount of time and distance I covered before I ever left the Commonwealth of Virginia. The drive was a bit exaggerated because I took a small detour to capture the independent city of Norton which counted as a county-equivalent for county counting purposes. However, the journey stretched an impressive distance even discounting the jog. I knew about all of that ahead of time of course. Nonetheless, understanding something and experiencing it in person differ considerably.

Rules

With all that in mind, I’d begun to wonder about the longest Google Maps default drives in layers of geography that mattered to me. Specifically I focused on my home county, state and nation. I made the rules simple. First, it had to be the primary default point-to-point route suggested by Google. Second, it could not cross the borders of the home jurisdiction. Third, I couldn’t add intermediate points manually and I had to remain within the lines. Bridges were fine. Ferries were not. As an example, the rules wouldn’t allow anyone to use the Alaska Marine Highway System to link Alaska to the Lower 48.

Admittedly, I formulated completely arbitrary rules designed to create some focus and structure.


County – Arlington

Arlington County, Virginia. My own photo.

The odd thing I’ve learned from Google Maps over the years is that some other person submitting the same endpoints might get the second option as the first one. Additionally that the recommended route could change over time. I can only say that the solution I found this morning worked. It could be completely different for you either today or if you came back in six months or six years.

These county estimates were difficult to determine. County lines in Google Maps disappear at a critical point as one drills-down. One has to have a pretty good mastery of the boundaries before starting and then go through a bit of trial and error.


State – Virginia

It turned out that my lengthy drive completely within Virginia’s borders was impressive. However, it stretched nowhere near as long as theoretically possible. For that, one would need to start from the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge (my visit) on the Atlantic Ocean, on Virginia’s eastern shore. The route led to some random point west of Big Stone Gap near the Kentucky border. In total, the distance going either direction came to 576 miles (927 km).


Nation – United States

I felt considerably less confident in my result for the United States. I found a decent distance. 12MC readers should be able to improve upon it, perhaps considerably. The route from Key West, Florida to a very westerly point on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula near Flattery Rocks National Wildlife Refuge stretched to 3,661 miles (5,892 km), a smidgen longer than the reverse of those same directions. One should be able to finish that journey by automobile with 55 hours of continuous driving. I wouldn’t recommend it.

This exercise could be expanded to other geographic territories, perhaps ones meaningful to individual 12MC readers. I played around with Canada a bit. The biggest challenge was Google’s bias towards U.S. highways to route Canadians around various Great Lakes. I also took things to a somewhat ridiculous extreme by examining Luxembourg, where I uncovered a 119 km (74 mi) route. I even went Down Under to New South Wales, Australia where my best find stretched to 1,797 km (1,117 mi).

Have fun!


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14 responses to “Longest Routes for Smaller Areas”

  1. Henry Avatar
    Henry

    Fun game! Longest I could find in Rhode Island: 67.5 miles, from Lighthouse Rd, Westerly to Beach Dr, Little Compton (http://goo.gl/svj6fs).

  2. The Basement Geographer Avatar

    City (well, village) – Nakusp: 8.7 km (5.1 mi) from Highway 23 to 300 block of Alexander Road

    County (well, regional district) – Central Kootenay: 409 km (254 mi) from Inonoaklin Mountain to Ryan Provincial Park

    State (well, province) – British Columbia: 2,416 km (1,502 mi) from Wady Road near Port Alice to easternmost BC/Yukon border crossing of the Alaska Highway (with ferry); 2,207 km (1,372 mi) from Waneta, BC border crossing to BC/Yukon border crossing, HIghway 37 (without ferry)

    Country – Canada: 9,418 km (5,853 mi) from Navy Road, Inuvik, NWT to Mistaken Point Park Reserve, NL (using maps.google.ca); 7,486 km (4,653 mi) from Navy Road, Inuvik, NWT to Caniapiscau Aerodrome, QC

  3. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    I got a few extra miles for a US country route. From the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center in Washington (47.86063, -123.9348) to the Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park at the tip of Key West (24.5491, -81.8097) shows 3,664 miles.

  4. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    California – 1,043 miles — http://goo.gl/maps/Lb3uJ

  5. Calgully Avatar
    Calgully

    OK, I can’t resist an Australian Challenge!

    I was able to find a route of 1861Km within New South Wales. http://goo.gl/maps/8rXOk

    But that’s nothing. How about Queensland? – 2605Km http://goo.gl/maps/3KkgN

    Or the granddaddy of second-level political entities – Western Australia 4074Km http://goo.gl/maps/Y5qwK

    1. Calgully Avatar
      Calgully

      Sorry – I got that Western Australian link wrong. But since then I have found an even LONGER route entirely within WA – see here http://goo.gl/maps/dZ7F3 4,247Km. 50 hours driving!

  6. January First-of-May Avatar
    January First-of-May

    City and “state” is the same entity in my case: the Federal City of Moscow. Google Maps hadn’t quite caught up with the July 2012 border changes, and the village of Kuzovlevo is in a particularly funny position as it’s assigned to Kaluga Oblast even though it’s actually within Moscow; that said, using Google routing but borders based on essentially every other map, the longest route appears to be 124 km: http://goo.gl/maps/4rCR9 (for the record, the actual border in this particular segment aeems to be defined by the river [Chernichka? Desenka? sources differ] just south of Kuzovlevo).
    When we’re talking about “county”, in my particular case, the relevant second-level subdivision is the Eastern Administrative Okrug (of Moscow); it’s the largest of the nine pre-2012 first-level districts of Moscow – or at least pretty darn close – but it’s dwarfed by the newly added parts. Nevertheless, thanks to random dangling panhandles, the longest route is a fairly decent 33.9 km: http://goo.gl/maps/hWUiL (I included a shaded map of the relevant district, so that the way the path fits is more visible).
    As for the entire country (Russia)… unfortunately, there’s a ferry (near Khandyga) on the only road connecting extreme eastern Siberia to the main road network (and for that matter, there’s not as many locations available in extreme eastern Siberia, so I’m not sure it it even would’ve helped). The longest route I could find that doesn’t involve any ferries goes, roughly, from the North Korean border in Khasan to the Finnish border just south of the tripoint with Norway, and takes an incredible 10,778 km (slightly less in reverse): http://goo.gl/maps/gl5NS 🙂

  7. Philip Newton Avatar
    Philip Newton

    For Germany, I propose http://goo.gl/maps/PzYyp — 1202 km, 11:45.

    For Hamburg, http://goo.gl/maps/wBbhL — 58.3 km, 1:21. (The obvious routes from the NE to the SW unfortunately cut through a tiny corner of Schleswig-Holstein, either at the motorway junction A1/A24 or at the northern end of the airport.)

  8. smoceany Avatar
    smoceany

    “It could be completely different for you either today or if you came back in six months or six years.” over 7 and it hasnt changed a bit

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