Here in Minnesota, Highway 12 is a major road from the Twin Cities all the way west to the Dakota border. It basically follows alongside the Great Northern railroad tracks. There is a town located about every 12 miles on average. Most of these towns grew up around a railroad station. (Several are named for railroad employees or stockholders.)
The story is that the distance between these railroad stations was specifically set to be about 12 miles. Because for farmers using draft horses to pull a heavy wagon loaded with crops, 6 miles to town and then back home again was about all the distance that could be traveled in one day during daylight hours.
I’m not sure of the accuracy of this story, but it sounds sensible.
Waypoints in the Road to Santiago are 40km apart on the flat stretches; less, if the area is mountainous. Most people can go 40 miles in one day, but not for a sustained length of time.
I’m sure I misremembered that 50 mile figure.
Another kinda related factoid, at least out here in the midwest, is how many of our main roads trace the paths of what were originally indian trails. I’m thinking of Ogden, Butterfield, St Charles, just to name a couple. A good clue is usually a road that deviates from the standard grid system.
True in the east as well. As a matter of fact, Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s main thoroughfare, is an old Indian trail that ran along the top of a low ridge.
Yeah, there’s a* lot * of very old routes around Philly – it’s easy to forget that thoroughfares like Lancaster Avenue, Germantown Pike, Bethlehem Pike, Old York Road, Easton Road, etc., are so named because they were the routes to those respective destinations. In bad weather, these are the routes to stick to – because they tend to follow ridges, etc., and don’t flood out the way newer roads do.
Plus there are still a lot of very old milestones in the near suburbs – indicating things like “Phila. 12 m” (referring to Old City, not the current city limits, which might be only a mile or two away at this point) – 'twas very heartening to know you were within a half day’s travel, I’m sure.
I remember talking with an old-timer in East Texas about why all of the little (some dying or dead) communities seemed to be about 10-12 miles apart. He said that was about as far as a family would want to travel in a wagon to get to town on Saturday. If you figure the most remote families were halfway between towns, that’s 5-6 miles out and 5-6 miles back. That also allowed time for shopping and visiting.
Other factor in East Texas was that the small communities were linked to sawmills and the same thinking applies to hauling logs to the mill by wagon.
All of this changed gradually with the arrival of the railroads and then later with improved roads and trucks.
Well, they did have maps, based in part on exploration by sea and river. So, given access to a map, you could do it bit by bit. So George Washington, aiming for New York from Mount Vernon, would rie first to Alexandria, then to Georgetown (using a ferry to cross the Potomac), then to Baltimore, etc. Even if the locals didn’t know exactly where New York was, between Georgetown and Baltimore they would know which road or track went to each of those cities. (But note that there wasn’t a big city called “Washington” in that area then).
I think you’re correct. I don’t know of any horse that has maintained 40 miles/hour for even a single mile.
Some speed records for horses:
1973 Kentucky Derby, Secretariat - 1.25 miles in 1:59.4 = 37.68 mi/hr*
1973 Preakness Race, Secretariat - 1.1875 miles in 1:53.4 or 1:54.4 = 37.37 or 37.70 mi/hr
1973 Belmont Stakes, Secretariat - 1.5 miles in 2:24 = 37.5 mi/hr
1968 Arlington Park , Dr. Fager - 1 mile in 1:32.2 = 39.04 mi/hr
Quarter Horses, which run only 1/4th of a mile, have faster speeds.
Races longer than 2 miles are usually called “endurance rides”, and are often 25-100 miles, over multiple days. The horses stop at various waypoints along the way, where they are checked by veterinarians. Any horse whose heartbeat, breathing rate or temperature is too high is required to rest before being allowed to continue. The mi/hr for such rides is much lower.
Extraordinarily, Secretariat actually got faster each quarter-mile of that race – at the end, as he won he was moving at 39.13 mi/hr. Even the horse that finished 2nd in this race, Sham, beat the previous track record.
The fastest time for the Melbourne Cup, which used to be 2 miles and is now 3200 metres, is 3 minutes 16.3 seconds by Kingston Rule (which incidentally is a son of Secretariat). By my calculations, that’s about 37 mph. So I doubt if any horse can run 2 miles at 40 mph, let alone 10 miles.
The Pony Express, which was pretty much the apex as far as pre-motorized land travel was concerned, averaged about ten miles per hour. Of course that was with fast horses, in relays, carrying extremely light loads; no one in a coach, or even on a saddle and carrying a respectable amount of baggage, could have hoped to attain that rate.
