Where is the geographical center of the United States?

There is no known method by which the exact geographical center of a given territory can be located. According to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, the approximate geographic center of the United States proper is in the eastern part of Smith County, Kansas, at latitude 39 degress, 50 minutes, and longitude 98’degrees, 35 minutes. The town nearest to this point is Lebanon. The geographic center of an area may be defined, in a” general way, as that point on which the surface of the [ 379] area would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness, or in other 1 words, the center of gravity of the surface. Anybody can find the geographic center, roughly, if .he will take a good outline map of the United States proper and balancejt on the point of a needle. This point “should be in the northern part of Kansas ..There are several reasons why this, or any other method, will not give an exact result. All maps, no matter how carefully prepared, are somewhat distorted. The United States is very irregular in outline. Besides, it is impossible to get away from the fact that any land area is part of a spherical surface. The North American datum, established by the Coast and Geodetic’Survey for triangulation purposes, is often confused with the geographic center of the United States. This point is at Ogden, Riley County, Kansas, at 39 degrees, 13 minutes and 26.686 seconds west latitude, and 98 degreesj 32 minutes and 30.506 Seconds north longitude. In a speech in the United States Senate in 1885 John J. Ingalls declared: “Kansas is the navel of the nation. Diagonals drawn from Duluth to Galveston, from Washington to San Francisco, from Tallahassee to Olympia, from Sacramento to Augusta, intersect in its center.” The geographic center of North America, as determined by the United States Geological Survey, is a point a few miles west of Devils Lake in Pierce County, North Dakota.