When looking at the map recently, I started to notice just how far someone could be from another person in the same state, especially in the case of Alaska.
Often times I consider how long it would take to get from one state to another, but some states are so large that it might take longer to travel from one point in the state to another point in the same state than it would take to travel to another state.
With this in mind, I decided to compose the following list that ranks each state by the distance between its two furthest points from each other (as the crow flies).
NOTE: I was unable to find a source online that specified the maximum distance between two points for each state, therefore, I had to visually inspect each state on a map to select a few sets of points that I thought were the furthest from each other for each state and then use the measure tool on Google Maps to determine which set truly was the furthest. For this reason, while I believe the following data is decently accurate, there could be some errors in the following list.
- Alaska: 2,271 mi
- California: 830 mi
- Texas: 809 mi
- Montana: 629 mi
- Florida: 597 mi
- Idaho: 563 mi
- Nevada: 563 mi
- Oklahoma: 533 mi
- New Mexico: 522 mi
- Michigan: 510 mi
- North Carolina: 501 mi
- Tennessee: 498 mi
- Nebraska: 497 mi
- Arizona: 485 mi
- Minnesota: 476 mi
- Virginia: 474 mi
- Colorado: 467 mi
- Oregon: 461 mi
- Missouri: 456 mi
- Kansas: 452 mi
- Wyoming: 449 mi
- South Dakota: 445 mi
- Utah: 436 mi
- Kentucky: 425 mi
- New York: 416 mi
- North Dakota: 408 mi
- Washington: 402 mi
- Louisiana: 401 mi
- Illinois: 393 mi
- Hawaii: 387 mi
- Georgia: 381 mi
- Alabama: 365 mi
- Wisconsin: 363 mi
- Mississippi: 348 mi
- Iowa: 346 mi
- Arkansas: 326 mi
- Pennsylvania: 326 mi
- Indiana: 323 mi
- Maine: 320 mi
- Ohio: 300 mi
- West Virginia: 277 mi
- Maryland: 256 mi
- South Carolina: 241 mi
- Massachusetts: 198 mi
- New Hampshire: 191 mi
- Vermont: 181 mi
- New Jersey: 168 mi
- Connecticut: 120 mi
- Delaware: 100 mi
- Rhode Island: 61 mi
Based on this information, Alaska, unsurprisingly, is the state with the greatest distance between two points within its boundaries. I also found it interesting to see that the average maximum distance between two points in a state is 439 miles.
Which state’s two most distant points are your favorite?
Onward American 