I know this has been discussed before, but for the life of me I cannot find where the discussion is located.

If you had a map and wanted to go from Metropolis, New Troy, to Smallville, Kansas, overland, what states would you go across? Is there a hard, fast answer or are all answers to this question the opinion of the writer?

Pat (angelsgmaw)

Hi Pat:

I asked a similar question in my poll: Where in the US is Metropolis?

This site gives you all pictures and detailed info on Metropolis you might need to know: Georgraphy of Metropolis .

I mapquested it for Another Lois and decided it would take two LONG days of driving to get from Kansas to Metropolis (I mapquested to New York and to Newark), which is why I ended up flying Lois to Kansas.

From Kansas to NJ / NY you'd take I-70 to I -76 to I-78 and need cross: Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania into NY / NJ area. Hope this helps.

One small correction. Traveling on I-70 from Ohio to Pennsylvania, you're going to pass through roughly 12 miles of the northern panhandle of West Virginia. I used to live there.

ETA: I've driven I-70 from Colorado to DC and it took four very long days. Day 1 - Denver to Kansas City, Day 2 - Kansas City to Indianapolis, Day 3- Indianapolis to Wheeling (WV), Day 4 - Wheeling to DC. Assuming that Metropolis is in the general vicinity of New York, I'd say it would still take 4 days to drive it.

I thought it might. I used to drive it all the time back in my college days, but my brain and the map were fuzzy.

Don't you mean 3 days if you knock out Colorado to Kansas City?

I think it really depends on the route (and number of hours driving you're willing to put in each day). For example, I went on a cross country trip from Bay Area (CA) to NY in four days drive time. But that's driving straight for over ten hours a day. And then again, there's the stereotype of CA driving rather fast... so we were probably doing on average about 75-80 the entire way. Anyway, I'm about a day or two out from Kansas, so I think three (if Lois is driving) or four days(for just about anybody else) is reasonable to assume for the drive to Kansas from Metropolis.

Thanks so much ladies. I knew this group would know the answers.

Pat

Those sound like short driving days, unless you run into a lot of traffic. According to Google Maps, it's only about 5.5 hours from Indianapolis to Wheeling, barring traffic. It took roughly 8 hours to drive from southern IL near Metropolis (hehe) to the mountains of southern WV, except when we ran into troubles in Louisville. I think it took us only about 7 to get to Charleston, WV.

Google Maps says 22-23 hours from Wichita to Philadelphia. Two days seem reasonable, unless you're taking the scenic route.

In my alt world stories, I picked Florence, KS as Smallville. It is 1344.3 mi and 19 hrs, 31 min from Florence to New York by Bing. One of the problems in Kansas is there is a bit of south to north before you can go west to east. We've driven I-70 going east because our daughter lived in Allentown, PA. The road has some slow spots with construction and trying to get through towns. So 3 days of 8 hours driving would cover it. One has to eat and stop occasionally too.
r/
Artemis

I used Neodesha, KS as Smallville and Manhattan as Metropolis several times. Mainly for On The Other Hand, I researched the drive fairly extensively and GOOD 2-3 days is reasonable. When Clark and Lana leave for college, they stopped in St. Louis [about 5 hours], somewhere else [about 12 hours] then into Metropolis [another 6-7 hours, iirc], but when Clark, Lois and Lana drove back, they did it in two days, stopping in Indiana overnight.

I think three easy days or two longer days would be pretty realistic.

I had gathered that New Troy was sandwiched in between Virginia and North Carolina, (possibly North Carolina in disguise) with Metropolis on the coast.

As for Smallville I don't specify other than it is about an hour from Wichita.

On L&C the maps of New Troy are very clearly Manhattan - in fact, one of them still had the Hudson River marked on it.

IMDB says the Superman Returns version is shown on a map in the location of Bayonne, New Jersey.

Ah, but Superman Returns is in the Movieverse. And on the map in question, Long Island looks to be missing.