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Farthest Distance From a McDonald's: 107 Miles
Farthest Distance From a McDonald's: 107 Miles
By Dan Mitchell
Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 10:02am
Picking up on, and quickly dismissing, all the "McDonald's is pulling out of Iceland" media hype of a few days ago, Katherine Glover, Bnet's food-industry blogger, grew curious about how ubiquitous McDonald's really is.
Frighteningly so, at least in the United States, judging by the map she found. It depicts an America blanketed nearly completely by Golden Arches. "McDonald’s really is everywhere," she wrote, "if one defines 'everywhere' as 'within 107 miles of anywhere' (or 145 miles by car).
The map, a depiction of the density of McDonald's (MCD) outlets, was created by Stephen Von Worley, who writes the blog Weather Sealed. He wanted to know the farthest one would have to travel to get from on outlet to another.
"This endeavor required information," he wrote in a post titled "Where the Buffalo Roamed," "and the nice folks at AggData were kind enough to provide it to me: a complete list of all 13,000-or-so U.S. restaurants, in CSV format, geolocated for maximum convenience."
His finding: "Between the tiny [South] Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!
(Update: To clarify, Von Worley here was referring to the spot that is farther away from any McDonald's than any other spot. That location -- the most remote from a McDonald's -- lies between those two South Dakota towns, neither of which has a McDonald's. The 107 miles is not the farthest distance between two McDonald's outlets -- it is the farthest anyone would have to travel to get to a McDonald's within the lower 48 states.)
Stephen Von Worley, Weather Sealed
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Comments
fur and far
Well, fur vs. far doesn't really help clarify, since further and farther are both words. However, those who noticed this are correct, and the mistake was mine, not the copy editors'. Whatever Encarta might say, both of my two main (actual) dictionaries (Oxford Concise and Webster's New World IV) say it's "farther" when discussing physical distance. Anyway, it's fixed. Thanks, all.
Furthest vs. Farthest
Both are correct according to Encarta Dictionary.
Both furthest and farthest
Both furthest and farthest can be used (furthest coming from further, which of course comes from far). Farthest, however, is more commonly used when measuring distance.
My main complaint would be with the second page. What is the point on having two pages if the second just holds a single throwaway comment to close the story. I can assume that the Content Management System splits the article into pages after a certain number of words or lines, but is that final line (and thus the second page) really necessary? Clearly it helps with the advertising numbers to have more impressions and page views by having a second page load up, but the writer should have been well aware of the limits of the system and made a necessary edit to keep it to one page.
Furthest Distance from McDonalds
I wish we were that close to a McDonalds! I know that fast food is bad for you, but when you are so far away from everything familiar, walking into a McDonald's is a big treat. We are stationed in Bosnia and the closest McDonald's is four hours away in Zagreb, Croatia. McDonald's flirted with the idea of putting a francise in a mall here recently, but thought twice about it due to some very unfriendly tax laws and red tape. If only we could get more outside investment here Bosnia would do so much better. With a 40% unemployment rate, McDonalds would be very welcome. Until that time, I will have to live for the once every three month splurge of a trip to Zagreb for McDonald's fries and an apple pie. They still deep fry them here!
Copy
Interesting but why didn't Mr. Mitchell's copy editor catch the glaring typo for the title of this story? It's not "FURTHEST". It's "FARTHEST." We don't travel "fur" to get to a McDonald's. We travel "far."