For hundreds of years, mariners have navigated the seas by using the 16 points of the compass. One of my main goals for this road trip, therefore, was to become the first person to visit all 16 extreme compass points of the contiguous United States (and document it). Why, you might ask? Well, because no one else had ever done it. And as Sir Edmund Hillary would've said, "Because it's there." Yep, me and the brave and undaunted Sir Edmund have something in common. Not much, sadly, but something!
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The 16 points of the compass include:
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I wanted to become the first person to visit, literally, all 16 corners of the United States. I'd already been to a few of these extreme places on previous road trips, but before this trip I'd never been to all of them -- and from the research I'd done, apparently neither had anyone else. Not only that, but it seemed that hardly anyone even knew where these places were. For instance, a number of newspaper articles claimed that San Diego, California was the southwesternmost place in the United States. I'm not sure how they determined that other than by looking at a map and saying, "Yep, it looks like the southwesternmost place." But in fact, the southwesternmost point is over a hundred miles away, up near Santa Barbara.
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Above: That's me (on the right with my shoes untied) in Key West when I was four. You can tell by my frown and crossed arms that I was upset, even at that young age, with the popular misconception that Key West was the southernmost point in the U.S. Someday I was going to set people straight! |
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Probably the most famous of these extreme points, though, is Key West, Florida, which many people mistakenly think is the southernmost point in the United States. There's even a huge concrete marker there shaped like a buoy that says in big letters, "Southernmost Point of the Continental United States." And there's a guy there who makes a decent living off tips, just by taking pictures of dorky tourists (like me) who sit next to that marker.
Now, I absolutely love the island of Key West, having visited there numerous times since I was four years old. But it is NOT the southernmost point of the United States or, in fact, anything. If you're talking about the continental United States, there's a small island near Key West called Ballast Key, Florida that's actually the southernmost point. And if you're talking about the contiguous U.S. mainland, then a place in the Florida Everglades is the southernmost point. The only notable geographic claim that Key West can make, other than being a great place to listen to Jimmy Buffett music, is it's as far south as you can drive in the mainland United States.
My point is that there's a lot of misinformation about these extreme places. One of my goals for this website and this road trip, therefore, was to identify where exactly these 16 places were. Another goal was to be the first person to visit all of them.
I started on my endeavor in April 2016 and 25,000 miles later, I visited my 16th and final extreme compass point on November 28, 2016 in the Florida Everglades. The extreme compass points are listed below, along with the date that I visited each:
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Here's a map of the 16 extreme points in the contiguous mainland United States:
Above: The 16 extreme geographic compass points that I visited on my trip. The red dots are the locations and the blue lines are the bearing lines I used to determine each location. If you zoom in, you'll start seeing the descriptions. |
In this section, I've posted stories, photos and videos of my visits to these 16 extreme compass points as I traveled around the U.S. I describe how I calculated these locations in My Methodology. And as I discuss on my page about The Rules, I considered only the contiguous United States mainland (i.e., the Lower 48 states). I didn't consider Alaska, Hawaii or any islands because otherwise, the quest becomes virtually impossible, for me or anyone else.
Yes, I made up my own rules for this endeavor. But as Leslie Gore said in her 1960's song, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."
