No… I am NOT looking for maximum total distance between any two cities (on the Earth, on a continent, or in a country). That has been covered in another thread.
I’m looking for two cities connected by roadways with the longest direct driving distance between them, unbroken by another city or town. Intermediate gas stations are allowed as long as they are not part of a named town.
Rules are that the driver must take the most direct route… No taking alternate twisty roads to artificially inflate the distance. What is the longest DIRECT drive you can do from Town A to Town B without passing through any other official, government-recognized named settlement?
I am most interested in the answer for the USA, but I acknowledge the international makeup of this board, so if you want to point out two cities separated by a whole lot of nothingness in China or Russia or something like that, feel free.
I can nominate the 414 mile stretch of the Dalton Highway between Livengood, AK and Prudhoe Bay, AK (Deadhorse). Nothin’ in between but tundra, mountains and pump stations. Now, someone could say that the road passes through Coldfoot, but you have to leave the highway to get to the “town”, such as it is.
Interesting rules. I don’t know the answer off the top of my head but it almost certainly wouldn’t be be in the Northeast to anywhere else because there aren’t any unincorporated areas as matter of government design no matter how unpopulated the area is. There are parts of states like New Hampshire and Maine that are quite remote and far from any population center yet they are still technically part of a government recognized town even if nobody lives in the vast majority of the land area.
Parts of Alaska are the same way. I don’t think every place in the state is part of an official town but some towns and cities like Anchorage are huge in area. Just for clarification, do you really want to disqualify any route that includes even an inch of road that passes through a town or village boundary even if nobody lives near the road itself?
The answers get fuzzy as you adjust the criteria. You can get on Interstate 90 (also known as the Massachusetts turnpike in Boston) and not stop until you get to Seattle 3,101.13 miles away without ever leaving the road. You are limited only by the amount of gas you have and your bladder capacity. Other variations of the question that are more about remoteness are even fuzzier and harder to answer without strictly defined criteria.
There’s also the 590 mile stretch between Dawson City and Fort McPherson on the Dempster Highway, Yukon Territory, which I’ve also driven. There is a gas station along the way called Eagle Plain, but it’s definitely not a town.
Winnemucca to Boise, or Elko to Boise. Both take about 5 hours. 5 hours of lovely desolation… I think both have a super small townish like thing about half way through though.
It’s 1200 km (746 miiles) by road from Ceduna, South Australia (pop. 2,289) to Norseman, Western Australia (pop. 857). Neither Ceduna nor Norseman would be considered “cities”, and neither has a local government distinct from the surrounding rural area, but they are both named places that are definitely more than gas stations.
There’s also the stretch from Wells to Warms Springs,NV on US 93 which is a little over 4 hours with only a tiny gas station at about the halfway mark. 240+ miles of not dammit.
I recognize that there is room for interpretation in the rules. My intent was centered more on the intuitive concept of “nope, ain’t nuthin’ tween here and there” than on linguistic game playing. The replies positing Alaska and Nevada are in line with the way I was thinking about the problem. Going from one metropolitan area where people live to another metropolitan area where people live, while not passing through any other metropolitan areas where people live. And I’m using the word “metropolitan” in a loose sense here to include small residential communities as well. I certainly am not talking about the fact that you don’t have to get off the freeway along I-90, thus avoiding the literal definition of “being in a city.”
As you follow Route 9 from Bangor to Calais, on the eastern border of Maine, there is about a fifty mile stretch where the are no incorporated towns, just square regions labeled “Township 27”, “Township 28”, etc. Nothing compared with Nevada and Alaska, but impressive for the East.
I’ve just been google-mapping. I was wondering whether that stretch of Highway 11 that loops through Northern Ontario might be a candidate, but it looks like it has a town every few hundred kilometres. Other candidates occur to me though: the Alaska Highway, the Trans-Labrador Highway, the highway that goes to Yellowkife, NWT (on which they just finished the Deh Cho Bridge), and whatever the road that goes to Tuktoyaktuk is called.
The end of the Trans-Taiga Road is supposedly the farthest you can get from a town on a road in North America; from the end of it, you are 745 km (463 mi) from the nearest town, Radisson, QC. However, there is not a named town at the end of the road, or anywhere along it — just a couple of (large) hydroelectric dams.
ETA: Apparently it has been proposed to extend this road to Shefferville, QC, which would tack on at least another 190 km (120 mi) to this stretch of road, probably more.
The full trip along the Gunbarrel Highway from Victory Downs in Northern Territory to Carnegie
Station in Western Australia is 1347 then another 353 kms on to Wiluna with three fuel stops.
The longest distance between fuel outlets is 489 km between Warburton and Carnegie Station
The Canning Stock Route in Australia is 1,150 miles, over which there is absolutely nothing, except evidence that there have been people before you driving it.
They don’t even name the townships? Damn, that’s remote. I’ve been in parts of Michigan’s Upper Penninsula where the roads have names like County Road LM and Country Road CR.
I used to drive that overnight in winter. For 90 miles, one didn’t even see an electric light. One night in a full moon, I drove the whole thing with my headlights off, it was surreal. That was in the 60s, before they resurfaced and widened it. As I recall, the townships along the way were Eddington, Beddington and Meddybemps.
