Geographically Challenged!

[1995hoo]

I think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.

They do that a lot with Michigan too. People don't realize how far across the UP is when headed to places like Houghton, Ironwood, or Ontonagon from downstate. It's about 4-5 hours to the Mackinac Bridge from the big cities downstate, and another 4-6 hours to get across the UP.

Yeah, Duke87's point about Virginia is apt in this context as well. The far southwestern part of Virginia, like down where Bristol is, is a LONG WAY down there, and Cumberland Gap (which I've unfortunately never visited) is even further away. I'd wager many people living in Northern Virginia who did not grow up here taking Virginia history in the fourth grade do not realize that Virginia shares borders with Tennessee and Kentucky. Back in 1997 I worked in Alabama for the summer and I drove down via the I-81/I-75/I-59/I-65 route. It took me about 12 hours from Fairfax to Montgomery and almost half of that time was spent in Virginia because it was some 373 miles from my parents' house in Fairfax to the Tennessee state line near Bristol. (Given that it's then over 400 miles further to Montgomery, why was half the trip in Virginia? Because I was able to drive a whole lot faster in Tennessee and Alabama.)

Maps REALLY distort Alaska and most of the Canadian provinces. I think it's hard for many Americans to realize just how BIG those areas are, with the effect no doubt amplified because most maps quite rightly omit large portions of these areas because they consist of empty spaces.

[english si]

Maps REALLY distort Alaska and most of the Canadian provinces. I think it's hard for many Americans to realize just how BIG those areas are, with the effect no doubt amplified because most maps quite rightly omit large portions of these areas because they consist of empty spaces.

And at the same time, make little NE states look a lot bigger than they are, due to the bizarre 'map each state separately' policy of American road atlases.

Similar to Florida, most people don't realize that in England you can travel almost as far from London to the SW as to the north. Lands End, at 291 miles, is further away from London than Newcastle-upon-Tyne (which is 277 miles up the A1). The Scottish border can be reached in 311 miles from London - only 7% further away (and on better roads so a quicker journey time) than Lands End.

Growing up near London, places like Manchester (196 miles via the motorway) and Sheffield (167 miles) were conceptually a lot further away than Exeter (197 miles via the motorway, 171 via the direct route) because Manchester and Sheffield is in the North, whereas Exeter is in the South. In fact, being NW of London, not too far from the M1, Exeter was about the same (bit further for the direct route) and Manchester and Sheffield were closer.

[Duke87]

the bizarre 'map each state separately' policy of American road atlases.

What exactly is so bizzare about it? It's quite utilitarian. If you know what state you're in, and you know they're in the atlas in alphabetical order, it's very easy to just flip through and find the right page. If the country were mapped out with each page representing a rectangular chunk in a grid, it would be more difficult to find the right page. And this wouldn't be efficient since due to vast differences in population density, showing the whole country on the same scale is unwieldy.

[AsphaltPlanet]

Northern Ontario is like this too.  My MapArt Ontario folding road map maps the southern province at 1cm on the map to 2.5km in real life.  Flipping the map over, every cm in Northern Ontario represents some 17.25km.  It takes a long time to drive a few cm's up north.

[english si]

but when you reach the edge of the page, rather than turning a small number of pages.

The changing scale on every page really doesn't help with getting a sense of scale. Sure have multiple scales to deal with sparse areas (Europe-wide ones do and even Britain ones do), but 3 or 4, not 50.

Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?

Also heading east-west and your route being on consecutive pages, and even not too many pages to turn for a N-S route is far better than being on page 15, then 8, 9, 68, 99, 100, 44, 56, 4, inset on page 27 (having been wrongly directed to 26) and 26 (LA to Jacksonville on I-10, obviously easy navigation, but awkward to follow on the map! An Atlas of an area the size of the USA arranged systematically, rather than politically, may have 3 or 4 'jumps' as the scale changes or some other slice thing happens), and having to flip between north-at-the-top and north-at-the-left, depending on what shape the state is, and how they've arranged it.

Compare the E30, from Cork to Moscow in my mostly 1:1000000 Europe Atlas: pages 2, 3, 8 (having dropped down a layer), 9, 11 (stuff on 10 partial duplicate of stuff on 9 plus a sea crossing), 12, 13, 14, 15, 88 (start of north eastern 1:1500000 section), 89, 90 (start of 'far' eastern 1:3000000 section, happily on the page afterwards) Sadly page 90 is orientated north-at-the-left, whereas the rest of the atlas is all north-at-the-top. Worst-case E-W route would be E70 or E80 where the way that Iberia and Italy get done in a more sensible way that groups those peninsulas together in the atlas, making a mess of page numbering along those latitudes. But still there's only one flick back (on the E70 when it heads north to Bordeaux), the rest being flick-forwards.

I don't think it is utilitarian to have pages in an atlas organised politically, rather than geographically. It's also not helpful to have over 50 different scales either, plus the orientation isn't consistent, which makes it really user unfriendly.

I believe Michelin do a glovebox USA that is one(!) main scale and geographically laid out.

[Scott5114]

I dunno. I think Americans tend to have state boundaries more firmly fixed in their mind than you might. Boise City OK is a long, long way away and yet Gainesville TX "feels" further away. Even though Gainesville is only 100 miles away and Boise City is 300, Gainesville feels more foreign just because it's in another state. I don't think having multiple scales is really an issue to most people because when you cross state lines it feels like such a significant event that turning the page and having a different scale seems appropriate to the situation. Maybe that's just me though because I very rarely (one or two times per year) get the opportunity to exit Oklahoma.

(What would you think of a hypothetical atlas that had England, Wales, N. Ireland, and Scotland all on separate pages with different scales?)

[english si]

(What would you think of a hypothetical atlas that had England, Wales, N. Ireland, and Scotland all on separate pages with different scales?)

awful. I take it it would be more than just 4 pages, say a Europe atlas? even so -yuck. Lets say it has the UK (or at least GB, with NI with RoI) together, though still does pages by country with the countries in alphabetical order then still it's a massive 'no'.

I'm strongly anti-EU, so borders matter to me more than most Europeans. As mentioned upthread I have a similar thing to what you have with Texan cities with the north of England (not even 'out of state'). But it simply makes no sense to me to organise an atlas politically, rather than geographically.

I've not left the UK for 4 years now, four and a half for another European country (last two foreign trips were long haul). I last visited Wales nearly four years ago, Scotland about 7. The "I rarely leave the state doesn't make sense to me. After all, if you live there and spend most of your time there, then rather than buying a poor-scaled map spread over one or two pages in an atlas of the US, you'd buy a decent map of the state (or part of the state in big states) that has more detail on it - you live in the UK then a Britain/Ireland/both atlas will be of far more use than a Europe one - more detailed, more accurate, more economical (using much more of the thing). Thus it doesn't matter about having the states individual as people don't tend to leave states, as the only time they'd actually want a US atlas is if they were leaving the state.

[Scott5114]

Well, yeah, the map I use most often is an Oklahoma DOT map that shows the entire state at a 1 inch to 16 mile scale, and I also have an Oklahoma atlas that has an even finer level of detail that I use when looking for possible old alignments of roads. I generally get the McNally out, well, hardly ever. The purpose of a Rand McNally is, as you surmise, when you're doing a longer, cross country trip across multiple states and don't want to deal with the hassle of acquiring and then managing on the trip a dozen state DOT maps.

Dealing with the detailed OK atlas on a trip is somewhat annoying. It's set up on a grid like you prefer–page 1 covers the far northwest of the state, the next page is the next block east, and so on until the far northeast, then the atlas jumps down to the west edge of the state on the next grid row to the south, and so on. This works somewhat well when traveling east-west, but when traveling north-south you will have to turn many pages as the next grid square south is always 10 pages forward in the atlas.

More importantly, the limitation of the grid system jumps out when you have traveled a good distance and glance at your map for some guidance–shall I turn at Route 55 or continue straight on Route 96?–only to find that you have crossed over to another page several dozen miles ago. Because the grid lines are arbitrary, there is no real-world cue to tell you that you have crossed from atlas page 45 to atlas page 55. This, primarily, is why I believe McNally and similar atlases split maps at state lines–when you cross a state line it is generally well advertised (certainly on Interstates you will get a distinct bump in the pavement, then a Welcome to State sign, then probably an exit for a welcome/tourism center, and all the state highway shields will change). All this signals to you "Oh, now I need to switch from the Tennessee page to the North Carolina page". This setup is preferable to your average layperson then having western NC on the same page as eastern TN and then suddenly having to switch pages around Greensboro or so. Page changes become predictable.

[broadhurst04]

I feel sure there are people in central and eastern North Carolina who think Charlotte and Winston Salem are in the mountains, and that the westernmost point in the state is Asheville. They have no idea that three counties in the state border Georgia, and that Murphy is only about two hours from Atlanta. A trip from Manteo to Murphy would probably take 10 to 11 hours at least, and that's if you don't stop. That's like driving from Raleigh to New York City.

[Scott5114]

Yeah, I severely underestimated the size of NC the only time I visited it. Knew TN was going to take a long time to go through, but NC...for some reason it never really registered.

[ghYHZ]

I was on the train once between Toronto and Vancouver with a tour group from Britain and they had a hard time visualizing just how big Canada is. After 34 hours, we were still in Ontario......just about to enter Manitoba and would be another two nights on the train before reaching Vancouver. (a cross-country drive would be similar)

Even in my own province, Nova Scotia which I consider small compared to the others, it's 800 km from Yarmouth to Cape North......about a 10 hour drive.

[hbelkins]

Yeah, I severely underestimated the size of NC the only time I visited it. Knew TN was going to take a long time to go through, but NC...for some reason it never really registered.

Our family used to vacation in the Outer Banks a lot in the 60's and 70's. Back then, with the gaps in the interstate system and there only being two-lane roads between Raleigh and OBX, it was easily a two-day drive from Kentucky, and that was if we left home at 4 or 5 a.m. -- and I live in eastern KY. We'd usually get to the Greensboro area before stopping for the night. Now it would be an easy day's drive from here to there.

Back then very little of US 25E was four-lane, there were at least two gaps in I-40 in the Asheville area, and I-40 ended at Greensboro. US 64 was a two-lane slog east of Raleigh and it went through all kinds of small towns.

[SSOWorld]

The New England states were very deceiving for me.  Entering Massachusetts on the MassPike at 5:00 PM local time and arriving in Boston two to three hours later for example

Crossing Wisconsin west to east along the Illinois state line takes 2 3/4 hours (on a freeway), while going north-south from Madison to Hurley takes 5 hours+ (mostly freeway)

[codyg1985]

Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.

[Scott5114]

Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.

I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.

OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.

[Duke87]

Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?

What this really comes down to is that we all prefer the system which we grew up being used to. Europe and the US do many things different ways and the way one does these things can seem crazy to someone who grew up in the other. But ultimately, each way of doing things works just as well for the people to whom it is native and natural. It's a purely cultural issue and neither is necessarily objectively inferior. I'm sure you would also argue that baseball is bizzare and cricket makes more sense, but grab your average American off the street and they would beg to differ. And I'm sure you would argue that the way we number floors in our buildings is bizzare, but again... When you travel to another country, things are going to be done differently.

[bugo]

Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.

I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.

OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.

I wonder how far it is from Idabel to Boise City as the crow flies?

[Scott5114]

Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.

I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.

OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.

I wonder how far it is from Idabel to Boise City as the crow flies?

Dunno about as the crow flies, but OK 3, which starts north of Boise City and ends southeast of Idabel, is 616.5 miles long.

[bugo]

What would be the best route from Idabel to Boise City?  US 259 north to US 59 north to I-40 west to US 270 west to US 412 west?

[empirestate]

Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?

What this really comes down to is that we all prefer the system which we grew up being used to. Europe and the US do many things different ways and the way one does these things can seem crazy to someone who grew up in the other. But ultimately, each way of doing things works just as well for the people to whom it is native and natural....

I have to say, I grew up with one system exclusively, and now I've had some experience with both, and it has never come anywhere near being so big a deal that I would even consider eliminating one system over the other. I just use the one that's available to me, and that's that. (I feel the same way about exit numbering systems, too.)

And think about it...if you're changing states so fast and often that flipping a dozen or two pages becomes burdensome, you've got bigger things to worry about, like the immense speeding fine you're going to have to pay!

[TheHighwayMan3561]

When we were planning to go to Maine after stopping at a music festival in downstate New York, my mom thought it was a three-day trip from the festival to Maine when it's only a few hours.

[hobsini2]

Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.

I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.

OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.

I think part of what makes IL so deceptively long is that most people (morons) when they think of IL they think Chicago Area. In this area for a very egotistical reason, "Downstate Illinois" is anything south of I-80 and west of I-39. That's right. Freeport/Galena/Moline/ La Salle are all considered locally "downstate". In fact, I-80 is no more than 90 miles from Wisconsin at its southern most point. Peru IL to Cairo IL is another 316 miles according to RMcN online.

[Chris]

I remember older Rand McNally atlases putting states like North Dakota or Nevada on one page. They look deceptively small that way, especially considering it takes like 9 or 10 hours to drive the entire length of US 93 in the state of Nevada. New Mexico still looks small until you read the map thoroughly and find out one inch on the map is like 30 miles or a 40 minute drive.

Europeans also often underestimate the size of the United States. I remember a discussion where someone find it logical to sign Miami near Richmond (it actually is signed near the I-85 split), unless you visualized them it's the same distance as from Berlin to Rome, or a drive from Los Angeles to Boston is about the same as driving from western Europe to Iran. As a matter of fact a lot of European countries are smaller than most midwestern and western states. Oregon and Washington alone are already significantly larger than Germany.

[Takumi]

I-295 also used to be signed for Miami from I-95 southbound at their northern crossing. It was greened out at some point, and when the overheads were replaced Richmond Airport was signed instead.

[bulldog1979]

My grandma tells a story about one of her cousins who came over from England on a tour of the US eastern seaboard. This cousin's tour had a free day in Philadelphia, and she was highly incensed that no one from the family would pick her up and bring her to Michigan for the day. It seems that she had no idea just how far the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan is from southeast Pennsylvania.

When I received a globe for Christmas as a young kid, I realized that my home state is just a little bit bigger than the UK. Until then, the only times I saw the two maps was on the TV news, when the graphics would show one country's silhouette above the anchor's left shoulder, and the other above his right. In that application, the UK and the US were shown at the same size, which is not the case.