Geographic Center of the Contiguous U.S.
Lebanon, KS | 294 Miles
At the end of a lonely country road just outside the tiny Kansas town of Lebanon sits a flag-topped stone monument marked with a bronze plaque proclaiming it the “Geographic Center of the United States.” While this was never precisely accurate—the actual geographic center was determined by a 1918 survey to be roughly a half-mile away on a private hog farm—it was thought to be close enough, most likely because the farmer presumably wouldn’t have taken kindly to strangers trudging through his hog wallows to get to the site.
To further muddy the geographical waters, the 1959 admission of New Mexico and Arizona to the Union moved the center point of the country two states to the north, near Belle Fourche, South Dakota. So more accurately, today Lebanon, Kansas sits near the geographic center of the contiguous United States.
Originally published in 2022.
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