For generations the accepted center of the United States was a monument in north central Kansas. The addition of Alaska, by mathematical wizardry, shifted the nation's center to Butte County, South Dakota. With the addition of Hawaii, it was again relocated a few miles to the southwest at a point 21 miles north of Belle Fourche. A plaque on Highway 85 proclaims that spot the "Center of the United States."
South Dakota has also claimed to be the center of the North American continent. A monument on Snake Butte, just north of Pierre, is said to be the center of South Dakota, as well as the approximate center of North America. The plaque specifically says, "approximate center," and admits that a National Geographic study gives the center of the continent to Rugby, North Dakota. The engraving ends by saying that the location of the geographical center is open to debate, depending on which several methods are used in figuring it. The National Geographic's method didn't account for the bodies of water, like Hudson Bay.
We do know that South Dakota is as far away from a salt-water sea as one can get on this continent. That fact was used to name a valley near Custer as America Center, for the center of North America. The Black Hills country is the continental "heartland," and that is one reason why it remained one of the last unexplored, unmapped until the middle 1870s-a time when most of the rest of our nation was crisscrossed with roads and ribbons of rail.
10/01/03