145 mi to the "Farthest" McDonald's

This graph - made by Stephen Von Worley - has been circulating for the last few days, but I decided to post it so the last dark corners of the internet for posterity's sake. The orange dots represent the McDonald's in the country, and the (few) darks spaces where no McDonald's exist. As you can see, there are very few parts of the US uninhabited by at least one Golden Arches.

To be fair, McDonald's unfairly receives ire for its unabashed takeover of every strip mall, interstate exit off-ramp, and city street in America. But it is a symbol for a certain kind of corporatism, and it is by far the most visible, so there you go.

Through his research, Von Worley discovered that the farthest distance from a McDonald's is an astounding 145 miles:

For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer.

Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!