Was there a book there a book or a passage that you read cause we can't give a strait up answer if we don't know the the thing to read...
Traveling across the Pacific Ocean would be the longest distance to travel, since it is the largest ocean by square milage, although it would be possible to combine different routes to increase the distance traveled elsewhere.
If you look at the years of the states and write down the ones in 1889 and 1900, it gets easier. Three that I got were Wshington, Montana, and South Dakota (I'm sure there are more but those were three).
It was a hurricane (Hurricane Katrina).
