Geodetic and Geographic Centers (roughly)

Kansas has two interesting center points: the Geographic Center of the Contiguous 48 States in Lebanon, and the Geodetic Center of North America in Osborne. My understanding is the placement of the geodetic center is mostly a correction from the geographic center in order to account for the curvature of the Earth.

I love how up-front they are that this is not the real marker; that it’s actually almost twenty miles away. The real one is on private property and apparently you can get permission to visit it. I wonder how often people ask and how tired the property owner is with fielding requests.

Maybe next time I’m in Kansas.

The geographic center’s marker is weirder. First, it’s not a benchmark, because it’s not actually used for surveying. But it does have this plaque that describes what it’s about, and gives you the coordinates of the center: 39°50′N, 98°35′W. But, if you have a GPS with you, you’ll find the marker is almost half mile away from there.

The little park around the geographic center also has this weird tiny chapel.

The sidewalk has also been recently redone, and as an added touch they put these little US map outlines (undoubtedly from a cookie cutter) with a small x in the center. I genuinely love this.