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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhat Does This Beloved Road Sign on the Massachusetts Turnpike Actually Mean?
The sign is regularly photographed and blogged by road-trippers, and remembered with fondness as a familiar milestone. People film the sign, even while they're driving. John McPhee gently mocked this marker of the cordillera of Massachusetts in a 2005 New Yorker story. Theres even a poem about it.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/08/18/becket_massachusetts_next_highest_elevation_oacoma_south_dakota_what_does.html
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What Does This Beloved Road Sign on the Massachusetts Turnpike Actually Mean? (Original Post)
doxydad
Aug 2014
OP
leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)1. this is a nation that bought rocks as pets some years ago
OffWithTheirHeads
(10,337 posts)3. That does explain a lot.
Renew Deal
(81,883 posts)2. We like to know stuff
And that is an interesting useless fact. Probably the distance to the next highest point plus the altitude in mostly sea level Massachussets also makes it interesting.
elleng
(131,202 posts)6. Yes, thanks, we like to know stuff!
Trailrider1951
(3,415 posts)4. It means it's all uphill for the next 2000 miles
Better downshift now
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)5. It means that's the highest point on I-90 unless you drive all the way out to Oacoma.
jmowreader
(50,567 posts)7. It means this country is shaped like a bowl
There are mountain chains a few hundred miles inland on both coasts...in the middle the joint is board flat.
shenmue
(38,506 posts)8. So Oacoma is only five feet taller?
Wow, that's exciting.
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)9. Can't say I've never heard of Oacoma, SD anymore... nt
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,847 posts)10. It means the entire country says fuck the metric system.