Is This The Farthest Away You Can Get From A Subway In The Continental U.S.?

It's going to be a several hour drive to "eat fresh."

It’s going to be a several hour drive to “eat fresh.”

We’ve been writing for years about the McFarthest project, an effort to locate the spot in the contiguous 48 states that is the farthest away from a McDonald’s. Last week, in a story about how Subways outnumber McD’s by nearly 2-to-1, I challenged readers to try to figure out where one would need to go to be the farthest away from a Subway. One reader has stepped up to try.

Using the most recent Subway location data he could find — from June 2013 — Consumerist reader Mark spent his Saturday trying to pinpoint a spot where one could be absolutely certain to not smell that funky bread stench unique to Subway franchises.

His calculations came up with a spot located at (42.397327, -117.956840), which he figures is around 99 miles from the nearest Subway.

This spot is located in southeast Oregon, not terribly far from the Nevada and Idaho borders, at least by middle-of-nowhere standards. It is several miles from the nearest major road (U.S. 95), and it’s nearly a 4-hour drive to the official McFarthest spot located across the state line in Nevada, not including all the time it would take to hike/bike from the actual spot to the nearest road.

Mark isn’t claiming that this spot is the precise location.

“The exact details vary depending on how you calculate great circle distances, etc.,” he tells Consumerist. “Nevada could probably find a point that came very close if they wanted to challenge Oregon for the title.”

So if you want to take on the McFarthest (Subway version) Challenge, please do, and send us your results at tips@consumerist.com. We’d love to hear from other people who have tried to figure this out.

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