The Declaration of Independence was debated, written and adopted in a few streets of Old City Philadelphia: City Tavern, Carpenters' Hall, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are all within a short walk.
The route runs from the tavern meeting of May 1774 and the First Continental Congress, through Jefferson's drafting in June 1776, to the vote of 2 July, the adoption on 4 July and the public reading on 8 July. The Liberty Bell's famous ringing is more legend than record.
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and then went back to Maryland about 13 times, bringing out some 70 people. Her work depended on a chain of Quakers, free Black ministers and abolitionists who hid and moved people north.
The route follows that chain from the Eastern Shore through Wilmington and Philadelphia to Niagara and Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, then to her farm at Auburn. Real routes were kept secret, so most pins are approximate.
Hill Valley is fictional, but almost all of it is Los Angeles. The 1985 film sends Marty McFly thirty years back to a small California town, and the filmmakers built its square on a studio backlot and dressed real malls, schools, churches and houses around the city as Hill Valley. This route follows the story from the Twin Pines Mall car park in City of Industry through 1955 and back to the McFly home in Arleta.
Each stop is a real place that played a piece of Hill Valley; the private homes are seen from the street only.
Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love at secondary school in Lagos, in a Nigeria under military rule where everyone seems to be planning to leave. She gets a scholarship to Philadelphia; he, refused an American visa after 9/11, ends up working illegally in London. Over thirteen years in the United States Ifemelu discovers that she has become "black" — and writes a hit blog about it — before deciding to go home.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel moves between real cities on three continents, and the route follows it in story order rather than in the book's flashback structure. Homes, salons and the university in Philadelphia are not identified, so most pins mark the city or campus.
