I thought about this while booking a flight from Houston to Boston. Travel has unquestionably become more efficient over the past few centuries. But what about the process of planning travel? How long would it take to make the arrangements for the same journey? If it took 5 months to make the journey (a complete guess) then the same ratio would give me only 5 days to plan. But this seems unrealistic to me, given I would probably have to write letters, gather provisions, etc. So has the efficiency of planning travel actually grown faster than the efficiency of travel itself? This seems fascinating to me.
My main questions are:
How would a civilian plan their travel 200 years ago?
What transportation routes would be used?
How long did hundred or thousand mile journeys take?
Thanks!
Your questions are very open ended and very circumstantial making them almost impossible to answer and adhear to this subs guidelines. Also, since they are so open ended you could literally write a historical paper on just these three questions. This is like when I asked my professor if I could write a paper on the United States. Yeah you can, buts it's going to take you your whole life to write. You need to be more specific. The more specific the more details we can give you. The more unspecific you are the more general our answer will be. For example:
"What transportation routes would be used?"
An example answer to your question would sounds something like "they would use the route that was already established, was the cheapest, most efficient, least time consuming of all the options that were available to them." I can't give you specifics because I don't know where you're traveling from/to. Traveling from the east to the west coast of the United States would be immensely different then traveling from England to Russia.
"How long did hundred to thousand mile journeys take."
Well based on our response above it depends on what "the cheapest, most efficient" way of traveling was to get to their destination. The thing about the 1800's is that at the time there was somewhat of a crossroads of 'old' transportation and 'new' transportation. There were cars, trains, and horse draw carriages still in use all at the same time. There were sailboats and steamboats. So, again your question is very open ended and has multiple answers. A good way of asking this same question would be "how long did a 1000 mile journey take on the fastest land/sea vehicle during the 1800's."
Not trying to be a dick just frustrating because I want to answer this question, but it would take me days to find all the sources and relevant information needed to fully answer your questions.