US Ends .com

Wikipedia hosts an interesting article (or at least it's interesting to geography nerds like me) which lists the extreme points in the United States (e.g. the northernmost points in the US, the southernmost points, and so on).  This blog post could be considered a subset of that article, as I am discussing the extreme points on the US highway system.  (Since the US route network exists only in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii are outside the scope of this post, not to mention all US territories.)  We will start with the most obvious, and from there it will get more complicated. Easternmost points Most map projections make it rather clear that Maine is the easternmost state (although it is even farther east than many people realize).  The easternmost US route terminus is where US 2  almost reaches the Canada border, about three miles east of its junction with US 1 in Houlton ME: Historically (before I-95 was built) US 2 actually did reach the Canad...

^ date reposted to this blog Feb. 01, 2022: originally posted to my old blog Our planet is spheroidal in shape, which means its surface is curved. So making a map of the Earth's surface involves taking something that is curved and projecting it onto something flat (such as a piece of paper or a computer screen). But this flattening inherently causes some distortion from reality. It is not possible for any one map projection to preserve all of the following: 1.) direction, 2.) shape, 3.) area, and 4.) distance. So when a cartographer chooses a particular map projection, they are choosing to preserve one or more of those traits at the expense of others. Maps of the 48 states often use the Lambert Conformal Conic projection. Even if you are not familiar with that term, it is a map projection with which we are all quite familiar; many cartographers use it because it is a great choice for mapping the 48 states. It preserves shape well, and it comes reasonably close to preserving ...