Where are Greenfield and Silver City in The Boxcar Children?

Question

I was reading The Boxcar Children to my niece awhile back. At one point, they're walking along a road and run into a fork in a road. The fork has a sign pointing to Silver City and Greenfield. Both are actual places in New Mexico, but they're over 300 miles from each other.

Silver City, NV is a near ghost town at this point.

Greenfield, CA and Silver City, CA are similarly hundreds of miles away (189 miles by the shortest car route).

The baker, who was chasing them, said that he didn't think that they could've made it as far as Silver City, which suggests that they were, in fact, far from each other.

Is the book referring to actual places? If so, where? Where are the books set?

Answer 1

In the third book, they drive to Maine to hike and canoe up the Bear Trail (which I think is made up, I was trying to find it to see if we could do it with the kids for fun) so they are likely in the Northeast somewhere.

There is a well-to-do neighborhood in Fairfield CT called Greenfield Hill, and Meriden CT is nicknamed Silver City. Perhaps she borrowed from these?

The author was born in and lived in Putnam, Connecticut.