A McScary Revelation

Have you ever noticed just how many McDonald's restaurants there are?

McDonald's has been known to captilize on upcoming real estate opportunities and is often a good indicator of local growth. In densly populated areas, you can expect to find a Micky Dee chain within walking distance. They also tend to pop up along highways between major destinations.

Rural areas without much growth? Chances are you won't see Ronald hanging out.

Stephen Von Worley of blog-site weathersealed.com wanted to see the concentration of McDonald's restaurants across the lower 48 states to see just how predictable the megacorporation is when it comes to location selection.

With a little help from the folks over at AggData, Von Worley mapped out the 13,000 or so McDonald's restaurants in the lower 48 and came up with this incredibly cool map:

As you can see (and to nobody's surprise), the highest concentration of restaurants lie east of the Mississippi river and along the West coast. In the more rural areas, most locations lie along interstate highways.

The furthest distance between two locations:

Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley with a distance of 145 highway miles.

I'm not sure what freaks me out the most... the overall concentration of McDonald's restaurants in the US or the fact that there are over 13,000 of them. I'd love to see the results for Canada and do a comparison of obesity rates in relation to the concentration of restaurants.

McCreepy!