Planing the Route to New Jersey (Part 1)

The 1816 letter was a lot more inspiration than information I could plan a route by.  It’s a short letter with few details.  G. W. Howell mentions that he travelled 1300 miles on horseback after leaving his cousin’s house. Using Google maps, the car route showed that the miles from Detroit to Hope on the south side of Lake Erie plus the miles from Hope to Detroit on the north side of Lake Erie was about 1300 miles.  I figured I was in the ball park for a similar route. 

Focusing on the southern route, I spent a significant amount of time over the holidays in 2021  researching early 19th century horse and buggy or wagon routes during the great westward expansion of the country’s early settlers.  I didn’t find anything that could be a workable guess. It appears that a lot of routes west were on the great rivers that flow to the Mississippi, and were too far south for the mileage given. 

Diving back into the letter, it was clear that G. W. Howell rode his horse from Dundas, through Detroit, and down into Ohio, “as far as the Lower Sandusky.” With a quick google search, I was able to find out that Lower Sandusky is now called Fremont.  But I overlooked a very important detail in the letter — he went back up through Michigan and returned home on his original route.  I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing there wasn’t an established east-west route through Pennsylvania without having to go much further south, so he followed a route he was familiar with. (Note: When I calculated a new route retracing his path, Google maps showed that to be about 1300 miles too.)

Even though the horseback journey didn’t include the route east through Ohio and Pennsylvania, I was committed in my mind that that would be a lot more fun to do a giant loop around Lake Erie instead of an out and back on the north side.

There is a great feature in Google maps that allows you to select a bicycle (instead of a car) and Google recommends bike friendly routes.  With a goal of 60 miles per day, I searched for a place to camp and started planning the route.