Rugby
South Dakota
May 2015
If you’ve got a thing, there must be a center of that thing. Right? North America is a thing so it must have a center. Have you heard of the “Center of North America?” If so, you may have heard something about Rugby, North Dakota. It’s a thing.
Rugby, in north central North Dakota, publishes a tourist brochure claiming to be the Center of It All! What they mean by “the Center of It All!” is the “geographical center of North America.”
It isn’t.
The generally unrecognized but truer center of North America is six miles west of Balta which itself is about 16 miles south of Rugby. This would place the center of N A in Kilgore Lake, among a number of other small lakes. I’m told that the fishing and the duck hunting are both excellent here.
Undaunted by the facts, Rugby claims to be the center of North America and the stone cairn in the center of town is just one of the many ways Rugbyites make a big deal of it.
Rugby claims to be the center of North America. Belle Fourche in South Dakota claims its position at the center of the United States of America. Rugby did the same thing that Belle Fourche did, which is to say, they built a monument in the center in town, miles from the real center, making it far more convenient for the tourists.
The United States is a thing too. This is fun, this history of the “Center Of It All” when referring to the United States. It helps to be a certain type of person to be amused. Put on your geek and let’s go.
In 1918 the USCGS determined that the center of our fair country was 1.8 miles northwest of the center of Lebanon, Kansas. Currently this spot is in a triangular parklet at the end of Kansas Route 191.
In the center of the park is a stone cairn with a flagpole sticking up from its center — the center of the center of the center. There is a bench where you can rest your center, and a picnic pavilion.
Sometime in the 20th century, my brother Laurence rode his motorcycle from Boston to San Diego. He was on a 750cc hog. When he reached this spot, the center of the country, 1.8 miles northwest of Lebanon at the end of Kansas Route 191, he met a couple who was riding from San Diego to Boston, the opposite of his trip. They were riding mopeds. 50cc mopeds!
The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867. As a territory, Alaska had not been figured in to the position of the country’s center, thus answering one question about how we define the country. Not a state? Doesn’t count.
I just want to mention here that indigenous people had been living on this land for thousands of years. It was, kind of, y’know, their land. Therefore Russia sold land it didn’t own to the United States who could not technically buy it. Just sayin’.
Anyway, in 1959, Alaska became a state. When that happened, no one argued that this territory was now an official part of the United States and as such, it considerably changed the size and shape of the country. Now the engineers and mathematicians, cartographers and geographers had to refigure the location of the center.
Because of Alaska’s enormous size and its location as an outlier, it shifted the center of this old, but newly transformed country, 439 miles to the northwest.
But wait. Here comes another state! Seven and a half months later, the islands of Hawaii became State #50. The center shifted again but because of Hawaii’s diminutive size, this shift was only about six miles. This placed the center of the nation right under our feet, in the mud, north of Belle Fourche in South Dakota. Or maybe dead center is on that cow patty over there, because…
Are you ready for this? There is necessarily an error factor. Sit down and take a breath.
The best calculation by the engineers and mathematicians, cartographers and geographers, yields an exact point, give or take ten miles in any direction. Even the experts will admit that their best calculations require this ± condition. Because of the variables, they just can’t get any closer than this.
Knowing this, congratulations to Lisa and me anyway, for standing in the exact center of the United States, kind of.
