Andro Linklater: The geographical center of the US keeps changing
[Andro Linklater is the author of “The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity.”]
IT’S just a red stake stuck in an anonymous spread of pasture 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, S.D., a rodeo town of about 5,000 inhabitants. But it is also the geographical center of the United States of America, as defined by the National Geodetic Survey in 1959. Or at least it is for now.
To find it, says Teresa Schanzenbach, executive director of the town’s chamber of commerce, “you have go into a ditch, cross a barbed-wire fence and maneuver amongst the cactus and cow pies.” So, plans are that in August, the center of the nation is to be moved 20 miles south, and an eye-catching granite monument will be unveiled in Belle Fourche itself so that visitors can see it more easily.
This may seem like a high-handed way to treat both geography and the United States itself. Certainly the implications reach well beyond Belle Fourche. Is the balance of the nation going to be affected? Will there be a seismic tilt towards Canada? And can we be sure that the center won’t shift again? History certainly suggests that it will — and within the foreseeable future.
The event that made Belle Fourche the focal point of the nation’s land mass was the admission of Hawaii and Alaska in 1959. Never have the frontiers of the United States remained fixed for so long....
... [B]efore the inhabitants of Belle Fourche invest too much money in a permanent monument, they should consider whether the age of expansionism is indeed over. In particular they might cast a wary glance at the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which was created in 2005 by President Bush and counterparts in Mexico and Canada....
History is resuming its normal course. It may be slower than invasion or purchase, but the regulations and agencies needed to enforce them will pull Canada and Mexico within the reach of United States jurisdiction as effectively as any means that Seward envisioned. Meanwhile, the citizens of Belle Fourche would be well advised to make the new geographical center of the United States transportable. It may eventually need to travel to somewhere near Omaha.
Read entire article at NYT
IT’S just a red stake stuck in an anonymous spread of pasture 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, S.D., a rodeo town of about 5,000 inhabitants. But it is also the geographical center of the United States of America, as defined by the National Geodetic Survey in 1959. Or at least it is for now.
To find it, says Teresa Schanzenbach, executive director of the town’s chamber of commerce, “you have go into a ditch, cross a barbed-wire fence and maneuver amongst the cactus and cow pies.” So, plans are that in August, the center of the nation is to be moved 20 miles south, and an eye-catching granite monument will be unveiled in Belle Fourche itself so that visitors can see it more easily.
This may seem like a high-handed way to treat both geography and the United States itself. Certainly the implications reach well beyond Belle Fourche. Is the balance of the nation going to be affected? Will there be a seismic tilt towards Canada? And can we be sure that the center won’t shift again? History certainly suggests that it will — and within the foreseeable future.
The event that made Belle Fourche the focal point of the nation’s land mass was the admission of Hawaii and Alaska in 1959. Never have the frontiers of the United States remained fixed for so long....
... [B]efore the inhabitants of Belle Fourche invest too much money in a permanent monument, they should consider whether the age of expansionism is indeed over. In particular they might cast a wary glance at the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which was created in 2005 by President Bush and counterparts in Mexico and Canada....
History is resuming its normal course. It may be slower than invasion or purchase, but the regulations and agencies needed to enforce them will pull Canada and Mexico within the reach of United States jurisdiction as effectively as any means that Seward envisioned. Meanwhile, the citizens of Belle Fourche would be well advised to make the new geographical center of the United States transportable. It may eventually need to travel to somewhere near Omaha.