When thinking about just how long it took Frodo to get to Mordor, or even how long the Nazgûl took to get to the Shire, it’s easy to forget just how huge Middle-earth was.

Below are two maps that I quickly threw together. The first superimposes a Middle-earth map over the United States. The second does the same with Europe.

Looking at it, we can see that walking from the Shire to Rivendell is basically like walking from Boise, Idaho to around Sheridan, Wyoming – a distance of around 600 miles. Continuing to Mordor would mean a hike to near Alva, Oklahoma – about 850 miles.

Of course, Frodo would take detours and wouldn’t always go the most direct route. His mileage to Mordor was 1,779 miles (according to the Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstand). This would be like walking from Los Angeles to St. Louis.

It would take Frodo and Sam six months to make the journey from the Shire to Mordor. This was the same amount of time that it took the average settler traveling along the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Oregon back in the 1850s.

Even knowing these things, it’s still difficult to understand mileage in our day and age. Unless you’ve done some thru-hiking, we really can’t grasp what it’s like. Even then, we can’t grasp what it was like to be completely isolated for hundreds and hundreds of miles, to be without help, communications or readily-available food sources – all while being hunted by any number of horrible things.

Hopefully these maps help a little bit in bringing Middle-earth into a more understandable view.