When I was planning out the route for my first “big” roadtrip in 2018, I wanted to make it as big as possible. I wanted to go everywhere and see everything. Aiming for the extreme geographic points of the US - that is, the southernmost, northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost points - seemed like a good way to try to do that. Hitting the “absolute” extremes, however, was out of the question. Depending on how you want to define it, for example, the absolute easternmost point of the U.S. is probably in the U.S. Virgin Islands or in the Aleutian Island chain that branches so far west from Alaska’s underbelly that some of the islands have eastern longitudinal coordinates. Either way, I wasn’t going to be able to get there without a plane or a boat. Instead, I had to add a small but significant caveat: I would visit the southernmost, northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost points in the US reachable by public road. The “public” part was necessary because of private oilfield access roads on Alaska’s North Slope that are as off-limits to visitors as they are northern.
The Southernmost Point – Key West, Florida (24.56° N)
Key West was the first extreme point I visited, and by far the most touristy. US-1 connects the Florida Keys to the state’s mainland. After leaving the Florida peninsula about an hour south of Miami, the highway curves southwest into the narrow strait that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Atlantic Ocean. For over 100 miles, it hops from island to island connected by bridge after bridge after bridge. The drive is spectacular, even if many of the islands themselves are overbuilt with marinas, seafood restaurants, beachfront rentals, and bait shops. Between the city of Marathon and Little Duck Key, the highway is carried by Seven Mile Bridge. A former railroad bridge runs parallel to the roadway and has been converted into a pedestrian bridge. From the center, the keys all but disappear from view and the bridge is accompanied by 360 degrees of sparkling azure flatness.
Key West has an official Southernmost Point Marker along the downtown waterfront at the L-shaped intersection of South and Whitehead Streets. When I pulled into town in late afternoon, there was a line of sunburnt tourists stretching halfway down the block waiting for their turn to take a picture with the marker, a 12-foot tall concrete buoy painted red, black, and yellow. The buoy declares that it’s a mere 90 miles from Cuba. Although the actual measurement is apparently a little more than that, it was nonetheless impressive to think that the distance between the buoy and Cuba was about the same as Brooklyn to Philadelphia. The world felt small. Since it didn’t seem likely I would be able to get a photo without standing in line and roasting in the sun for an hour, I decided to come back later.
In the meantime, I headed to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, which occupies the southwestern part of the island. The park surrounds an antebellum fort built to protect the southern coastline of the US after the War of 1812 but also includes long stretches of sandy, palm-studded beaches. Technically, some of the beaches in the park lie just a little bit further south than the buoy marker. I stayed on the beach until sunset, watching the sun grow larger and more orange as it sank closer to the ocean horizon. As if on cue, seconds after the last rays dipped below the water, a park employee came through to announce the park was closed.
Now that it was dark, there weren’t nearly as many people crowding around the buoy although there were still a few families of tourists decked out in Hawaiian shirts passing by on an after-dinner stroll. I asked a family if they wouldn’t mind taking a picture of me with the buoy. I expected one of the parents to do it, but they instead passed my camera to their son, explaining that he was the photographer in the family. The son was probably about 8 years old but had all the energy of a studio photographer. “Give me a big smile. 3… 2... 1… Now let me try a lower angle. Smile!” He clicked away.
The Northernmost Point – Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (70.23° N)
From Key West, it took me 21 days to get to the most northern point on the U.S. road system. While I’m not sure how many miles I put on the car during those three weeks, Google Maps says that the most direct route would have been nearly 5,500 miles long. From Fairbanks in central Alaska, it’s about 500 miles north through the Alaskan wilderness to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Coast.
Round-trip, the journey from Fairbanks took three days and two nights. The majority of the route follows the desolate and largely unpaved Dalton Highway built to serve the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope. The Trans Alaska Pipeline runs parallel to the road for much of its length and carries crude oil 800 miles south to Valdez, a port city on Alaska's south coast. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground just south of the city of Valdez in 1989 causing one of the largest oil spills in history, it was carrying oil that had ridden the length of the pipeline from Prudhoe Bay. Driving alongside the pipeline was a somber reminder not just of its environmental impact, but its human impact as well. More than 32 workers died during construction of the pipeline in the 70s.
The Dalton is full of trucks shuttling back and forth between the oil fields and civilization. Early on, the road crosses the mighty Yukon River, which bisects Alaska from east to west as it runs from its glacial beginnings in British Columbia, through the Canadian Yukon, and across Alaska into the Bering Sea. The highway continues north through rugged taiga and tundra, entering the Arctic Circle at mile marker 115.
Sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle is Coldfoot, a tiny outpost town with a truck stop and a small visitor center jointly staffed by a trio of federal government agencies. The terrain gets noticeably more mountainous north of Coldfoot and snowcapped mountains loomed large to the north as I approached the foot of the Brooks Range. Alongside the road, the landscape was rocky with patches of wildflowers popping up between boulders, likely sustained by the pristine, icy streams trickling down from the mountains.
At the foot of the range, the road begins a steep climb through a series of switchbacks, culminating at the Atigun Pass. The Atigun is the only road pass through the Brooks Range. When I drove the pass northbound on the last day of August, there was already snow on the ground. Because of the sharp, blind, slippery curves of the pass, truckers report their whereabouts via CB radio at certain key points in order to avoid any surprises or collisions. I listened in using the radio I’d bought in Fairbanks. The airwaves were mostly chatter about road conditions and when the truckers would get to go home to see their families next.
The views from both the south and north sides of the Atigun Pass were breathtaking. On the south side, it was a sunny day and fluffy clouds hung above a short, narrow valley flanked by snow-dusted mountains. The valley floor was clear of snow and was a mixture of dark, vegetal greens and rocky reds and browns. On the north side, it was overcast as the road wound down towards the North Slope and everything was covered in a thin but not insubstantial layer of snow. The landscape a wash of white and gray and wind whipped up into the pass, drowning out the motor roar of any trucks that might have been straining up to the top.
The drive along the Dalton was a fantastic reminder of the cliché that the journey can be even more important than the destination, because as incredible as the scenery was along the highway, Prudhoe Bay itself was an industrial hellscape. It’s not really a town as much as a collection of massive storage tanks, truck repair centers, dozens of modular buildings and portable office trailers, and imposing corrugated metal motels primarily serving oil field workers during their week- or month-long shifts. Everything was covered in mud. When I arrived, my side windows were so caked with the mud churned up by my tires and those of passing trucks that I couldn’t see out them. My pearly white Massachusetts license plate was unrecognizable under the brown glop.
There’s not much for a tourist to do in Prudhoe Bay except visit the Prudhoe Bay General Store. Its front is covered in hundreds of the stickers that adventure travelers seem to love to leave on signs wherever they go. The store is mainly a hardware store but also houses a post office tucked into the end of the aisle between the drill bit display and the spray paint. I dropped off a few postcards to be sent to friends and family back south.
The second floor resembled more of a convenience store, with snacks, toiletries, medications, greeting cards, and some clothing. The shelves were sparsely stocked, at least until the next supply truck made it up from Fairbanks.
It had started to rain while I was inside and things were getting increasingly muddy and somehow even more desolate-looking. I had no qualms whatsoever about getting out of Prudhoe Bay and just needed to gas up before heading back south. Ironically, despite the fact that Prudhoe Bay is home to the largest oil field on the continent, gas cost twice as much as it did elsewhere in Alaska, where it already cost nearly twice as much as in the lower 48. The next gas station was 240 miles south in Coldfoot, so there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of competition to drive down prices.
The Westernmost Point – Anchor Point, Alaska (151.83° W)
Alaska is so massive that you can drive 1,000 miles south from Prudhoe Bay and still be in Alaska. About 1,000 miles due south and a little bit west of Prudhoe Bay is where you’ll find Anchor Point. Anchor Point is the westernmost extremity of the Kenai Peninsula but, by Alaskan standards, it isn’t actually that far west. It’s pretty much right in the center of Alaska’s southern coastline. However, because the entire western bulk of the state is unreachable by road, Anchor Point is as far west as you can get on a roadtrip.
But just because Anchor Point isn't the absolute westernmost point in Alaska, that doesn’t mean that it isn't still quite far west. It boggled my mind to learn that Anchor Point is just about as far west as Hawaii. If you flew due south, you would pass within just 170 miles of the Big Island.
Just like Hawaii, Anchor Point offers both beaches and views of volcanoes. Although the beaches are rockier than Hawaii’s and littered with much more driftwood, they provide the perfect rugged foreground for Iliamna Volcano, an active stratovolcano that rises up 10,000 feet from the far side of Cook Inlet. When the sun sets on Anchor Point, it drops in behind Iliamna and the other glacier-covered mountains in the Chigmit Range, an awe-inspiring juxtaposition of fire and ice.
One thing that Alaska offers that Hawaii doesn't are bears. The main source of traffic on i Peninsula were tourists (and maybe locals) slowing down or pulling over to gawk at bears on the side of the road. It was rubbernecking Alaska-style.
The Easternmost Point – Lubec, Maine (66.98° W)
From Anchor Point, it’s a roughly 4,800-mile trip across Canada to the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec, Maine. I didn’t go directly, instead meandering slowly across Canada and out to its Maritime Provinces before looping down to Maine. It had been early September when I left Alaska and was early November by the time I entered Maine. Enough time had passed between the westernmost and easternmost points that my patchy stubble had grown out into a terrible, patchy beard.
I crossed the border at Pohenegamook, Quebec, a tiny town with a tiny border crossing that lets out into the North Maine Woods. The North Woods encompass roughly 5,500 square miles of forest with no towns or paved roads and are crisscrossed by a maze of logging roads. The border crossing mostly processes trucks hauling timber from Maine into Canada, and the customs agent seemed a little surprised to see a passenger vehicle pull in. When he asked me where I was headed, it felt less like a typical border guard interrogation question and more like he was genuinely confused as to why I was there. He wanted to make sure I knew that the roads in the North Woods weren’t paved and that they were particularly beat up and muddy due to run-off from the snow and wear and tear from the logging trucks. I asked if he thought it was a bad idea for me to be on those roads in just a RAV4. “Nope, I bet you can do it… I just don’t know why you would do it.”
I emerged from the North Woods back onto paved roads in Allagash and headed northeast to Fort Kent, a town separated from Canada by the St. John River. Fort Kent is the northern terminus of US-1, the same US-1 that had brought me from southern Florida to Key West at the start of the trip. This time, I followed US-1 about 200 miles south to West Quoddy Head, skirting along the border with New Brunswick most of the way.
I got to Lubec after dark, but that was fine. If Anchor Point – the westernmost point – had offered incredible sunset views, then surely West Quoddy Head – the easternmost point – would offer incredible sunrise views the following morning. I found a trailhead parking lot where I could spend the night out of the way and set an alarm to wake up before dawn.
I got to the iconic red-and-white-striped lighthouse about 15 minutes before the sun would come up, excited to see what kind of spectacular view was in store. Instead, I realized that the morning was completely overcast. A mist hung above the ocean as it started to drizzle. Sunrise came and went without fanfare and without color, the featureless, monochrome gray sky making all my photos look overexposed.
Yet oddly, of all the stunning sunrises I’d been fortunate enough to see along the way, somehow this nondescript November daybreak would still end up among the most memorable. It was the final paragraph in a long chapter, a bookend to my first three months of life on the road. That night, I would be back in Massachusetts for a brief pause for the first time since leaving for Key West in the summer heat. While I’d been gone, the leaves had donned their autumn colors, turned brown and fallen off, and been buried under snow. I was returning home with enough memories and stories to fill the 5,500 miles between Key West and Prudhoe Bay, as well as the 4,800 between Anchor Point and West Quoddy Head. It felt good to be tired.