Mapping Thornburg to Westmar

Me at Westmar College, 1984

When I decided to go to Westmar College in Iowa, I could tell my dad wasn’t exactly thrilled I was moving that far from home. Most of my classmates were going to much closer institutions in like Hays, Colby, Concordia, Manhattan, even Lawrence and Wichita. I think in hindsight he might have been worried too about the cost of private college versus public in-state tuition.

But Thornburg was only four miles from the state line with Nebraska, so it wasn’t like I really going a great distance in leaving Kansas. But it was still much further than going to Winfield, south of Wichita, and the home of my second choice, Southwestern College.

Well - to the gist of the blog post - there wasn’t Google Maps back then to give you options of different routes to compare time and mileage. I loved looking at maps, something I picked up from my Dad. The summer before going to Westmar, I had already tried a different couple routes: all interstate (except Thornburg to Hastings) and Highway 81 to Highway 20. Both were about six hours drive and I wasn’t a fan of going through Omaha. [Back then Interstate speed limits were double-nickel unlike today]

But I thought to myself, there’s got to be something better than Highway 81 and getting blown off the road by semis. So, I found a diagonal route - diagonal routes usually are the best way to get from point A to C by bypassing point B.  So out of curiosity I plugged my old route into Google Maps and was pleasantly surprised.

The third route choice was my route. It was 331 miles long and took 5 hours and 50 minutes to travel. That was right. Almost always about 6 hours to get back home or to get back to campus. I was pretty pleased with myself.

The number one route choice picked by Google Maps had the most miles to drive but the shortest time - that was the aforementioned interstate route. Again, Google Maps is figuring in today’s speed limit and not back then because back then - it was still about 6 hours to drive. Have to remember back then in big cities, the speed limit dipped below 55.

The number two route surprised me. In fact, if I had known that this route was both shorter and faster than my route, I would have used it. But back then, I didn’t think anything could beat a diagonal route - not true in this scenario.

So the second route option from Google Maps was to take Highway 77 straight north out Lincoln, through Fremont, and across Highway 20 to Highway 20 Business through Sioux City to Highway 75. That route never even occurred to me to being the better route. It was only six miles shorter than my route at 325 miles but it was 30 minutes faster! Wow - I would have loved that.