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Aack, meant to say "NOT" what I want to do in that last sentence, not "now."
Deep breaths. One of my co-workers said that wedding planning is excellent preparation for marriage. I've been lucky - my FI is involved, but is definitely interested in making sure I'm happy with all the choices. Of course, that makes me want to make sure he's happy with anything he expresses an interest in or opinion on, but that may just be his evil plot... 
For your situation, can you sit down with him and explain that you don't mean to send mixed messages and that you're finding the venue hunt stressful? It may help to set a day by which you want to have things booked, noting that your date is already booking up at some places and you'd like to settle this and move on. Once you have a "book by" date, that should inform the number of properties you can realistically look at. 70 is madness and will drive you both crazy - with over a year left, you'll need to pace yourselves. From a budget standpoint, by booking early, you may be able to lock in 2008 rates, which may help.
On the overall planning front, I know I have a hard time letting go, so we've had to carefully negotiate who does what. Is there an aspect of the wedding he is particularly interested in? If so, can you let him take the lead on that? he can do the leg work and come up with some options and then you can decide together.
When we first started planning it was hard to determine how much searching we really needed to do, so it may just be that he's really enthusiastic or perhpas just concerned about getting the "perfect" place - either because everyone wants the perfect place or he may see this as a planning test of how much you trust his opinion. Whatever the case, you two need to find a way to work together or divide the work in a way that suits you both - find out what is important and come up with a way to execute that works for you. For example, perhaps he's in charge of doing the research for venues based on a list of attributes you both have crafted. He would come up with x number of options that the two of you would review together and decide on x number to visit. Does that make any sense? That could apply to anything.
Another approach is to break down everything into concrete tasks and you can either volunteer for certain tasks for designate based on available time, inclination, interest or aptitude. Good luck!
Wait until you buy a house together. 
Guys excel at the hunt - it is what they love. Your guy is just loving it a little too much.
Seriously, I would sit down and establish together some parameters for both the venue and the venue hunt. You know - must hold X guests, must be within such-and-such area (and I think perhaps a 300-mile diameter circle is too big), must be less than $X000, must have an outdoor area for photos... whatever your basic criteria are. Then I would let him do all the searching on the internet and over the phone that he likes. Just establish a start and finish date for the physical visiting of venues, a maximum number to visit total, and a maximum number to visit in any given time period. So maybe the internet list needs to be narrowed down to 16 total, which you will physically visit over two months doing no more than 2 per weekend.
And also, you need to see if you can agree that when you find a site that meets all your criteria and that you both love, you will stop looking for something better. This is how girls end up with two or three dresses - they find something good enough, and then they keep looking. There are probably thousands of places that you could get married. You won't live long enough to look at them all. You probably need to lock in a venue between a year and 9 months ahead (you will get some feel for this when you talk to them on the phone about how far out they book up). You could spend all your spare time over the next 6 months looking at venues. But why would you, when you could also find one that is good enough, and spend your time and energy on other things?
I agree with Suzanno. I was your fiance at first and ended up with an unruly spreadsheet of venue possibilities, completely stressed out by the decision facing us. I finally realized that it's not about exploring every option under the sun, weighing all the pros and cons, and making the perfect choice. It's really about setting priorities and parameters, finding a place that fits the bill, and signing that contract!
Once I discovered that, it all became much easier. Maybe if you sit down with your fiance and discuss this, he'll come to the same conclusion. Wedding planning has been relatively stress-free since I stopped looking everywhere for the "best" everything.
I did a bit of research online to find a photographer, we met with him, liked him and booked him within a week. Same with florist, day-of coordinator and DJ (well we talked to two and chose one).
You'll have bigger fish to fry, like the guest list. Don't kill yourselves over every little detail.
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So it seems most people here are writing about their FI being under-involved in the wedding planning. What about one who is suddenly over-involved??
I have done a lot of research into reception sites, and we went to see some. It seemed afterward we both agreed on what we wanted -- we were leaning toward the more artsy, "modern" sites, not so much toward historic sites, or hotels/country clubs. There were two places in particular that I *thought* would end up being our choice.
Well. FI has now decided we should check out more places. OK, fine, I let him do the research and make the phone calls. I'm down with checking on a few more. But now ... he seems intent on checking out every friggin' possible site within a 150-mile radius. We're in DC. There are A LOT. And he's thrown in a lot of places that I *thought* we had agreed weren't really our taste. There was even one we saw that I thought we both agreed wasn't what we wanted, only now he's saying he thought it "wasn't so bad."
I'm getting upset because I feel like if we keep looking around, we're just going to make it harder on ourselves and it will only lead to a lot of second-guessing ... not to mention more arguments if, say, we don't agree on a certain venue. Our wedding is October 2009, so we have time, but I had really hoped to get something booked by the end of the summer, just for sanity's sake. Plus, things are already getting booked for our potential dates. Now I'm not sure when a booking is actually going to happen.
FI says I tell him one thing one day, then something else the next, which I'm really not trying to do. But who knows, I'm feeling very overwhelmed! Last night, he pulled up some caterer's Web site with (I kid you not) about 70 places on it and thought we should start going down the list. I said maybe we should just start with the list he had already put together (which was about 15 places) and he went off on me for it, saying I had asked him for help but now was telling him he was doing it wrong, and that I always tell him he does things wrong, etc. I have no idea what set him off, that was not my intention at all. We've been together three years and I've never seen him act this way!
I've been in tears at various points the past few days, and I know I'm not making him happy either, and right now I'm about this close to boxing his ears over all this. I told him today this is not worth the argument, that something needs to change because we're getting away from what matters -- that we love each other, and that's why we're getting married.
But mostly I just feel like he's making this much more complicated than it needs to be. I want it to be a choice we both agree on, because it is *our* day, but right now I'm fantasizing about cutting him out of the planning altogether ... even though I know that's now what I really want to do.
Sorry this is long. Any words of wisdom?