Rugby North Dakota - The Geographical Center of North America?

Monday, June 24, Day 63

John got up this morning and put on his cowboy boots.  He says they would have looked funny in Vermont, but they fit right in out here.

I told him now that he has on his boots, all of a sudden the word Shit has about five syllables in it. 

As we make our way across North Dakota, we are eagerly anticipating the geographic center of North America.  And we finally reach Rugby!  How exciting!  There is this rock obelisk declaring this unique distinction. The restaurant next to it is closed.  The obelisk, about 15 feet tall,  was moved when Highway 2 was widened, but local officials don't care - as long as it is somewhere in Rugby.  

Signs on the road give you the distances to other places from here.  Why, I don't know.

Turns out, the real geographical center is about sixteen miles southwest of here, in a slough, near the smaller town of Balta, population about 60.   However, the geographical composition of the North American continent is always changing, and there is no way to pinpoint the exact location. But, Carpe Diem, as they say, and Rugby did indeed seize the day  They declared themselves the geographic center, printed postcards, T-shirts, and brochures, and they lay claim to the title.  They have even trademarked the phrase and sued others who would claim otherwise.

The people in Rugby aren't too worried about the controversy.  The mayor claims that such conversations are for "nit-pickers"

The man who owned the farm near Balta did erect his own monument, and included a statue of the Virgin Mary.  That ought to account for something.  But he is gone now, and the monument has crumpled.  About 4,000 people a year tramp to the area to see the "real" center.

But, as the US Chief of Geodetic Survey is quoted as saying, "Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and the geographic center of something."

John says the only real geographic center that matters is the one in Texas --- because no matter which way you go, you are leaving Texas!  He LOVES that joke!

So here's the deceiving lie.  Rugby claims the title of Geographic Center of North America, when it really belongs in the slough between Orrin and Balta.  The one with the submerged statue of the Virgin Mary.

I had been kind of confused by all of this, because I remember being at the Geographical Center near where my sister lives in Nebraska. (It's actually near Lebanon Kansas.)  However, I was at the Geographic Center of the 48 Contiguous States. Got to keep those geographic centers straight! It  too, was an obelisk, only about 1 1/2 feet tall at the edge of a corn field.  I made John's sister Susan drive out there with me, and I've never heard the end of it.  Like John, she does not like to stop for historical markers, let alone go out of her way!