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Comment by bagrow | Hacker News Reader

Very dissatisifed with the evidence in this article (only national parks?), so I did my own digging.

Here is a 2005 USGS map [1] color-coding nearest road distance for every 30m x 30m square [2] in the lower 48. Surprisingly, it seems to hold up the article's claim reasonably well, and without resorting to discussing 'machines' or 'motors'.

[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3011/report.pdf

[2] Edit: the map shows 1 km x 1 km averages of the higher-resolution 30 m x 30 m bins.

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In the US, "Wilderness" has a specific meaning at the Federal level. "Machines and motors" is part of the wilderness designation. Wilderness designation prohibits chainsaws, snowmobiles, outboard motors, aircraft, and bicycles. Horses are allowed and owners of valubale Wilderness Area inholdings will use wagon trains to haul construction materials for their getaways.

This article (among others) suggests that the most remote from a road is a corner of Yellowstone where you can get about 20 miles away. [1] I sort of expected that the distance would be greater even accounting for the fact that many "roads" in the West aren't really what a lot of people would consider roads. I have also read some claims for a greater distance from a road, such as in the Wind Rivers, but I haven't seen anyone arguing for more than 30 miles or so.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/yellowst...

[ADDED: The USGS map is really interesting although I wish they had given the "winner." It appears that there are a fair number of spots that cluster around about the 20 mile point. Some are in places you wouldn't necessarily expect although many of those are along a border which reduces the number of directions where a road could lie.]

>only national parks?

Having just come out of spending over a week in the Pasayten wilderness, it's most definitely not a national park..

Right, just to clarify, a "wilderness area" is similar to a national park in that it is land that is set aside by governmental decree, but most things are banned in a wilderness area, notably motor vehicles, whereas many national parks have all sorts of development.

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