Hi rcs1537,
:welcome: to
Laptop GPS World.
DeLorme Street Atlas 2009, as far as I can tell, cannot automatically optimize the order of the stops in a route, but users may do it manually. Go to Route tab, press the Advanced button, and there you may select the stop you wish to move. Click on the stop to highlight it, and then use the Up and Down buttons on the right, to move the stop up or down on the list of stops.
Doing it manually may be easy if you only have small number of stops, and if it is quite obvious by looking at the map, which stop should be the first, second, and so on. In other cases, it would be more helpful if the software could do the "thinking".