The Center of North America is Probably in Center

GEOGRAPHY

Teachers, scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers Toolkit, including today’s MapMaker Interactive map.

Discussion Ideas

The New York Times article describes three towns identified as the “center of North America.” Where are these three towns? Take a look at today’s MapMaker Interactive for some help.
- Rugby, N.D. (48.3689° N, 99.9962° W) The town of Rugby has held the title the longest, since 1931. It also has a 15-foot stone monument declaring itself the “Geographical Center of North America,” and legally owned the phrase until summer 2016.
- Robinson, N.D. (47.1428° N, 99.7812° W) Robinson is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Rugby. When Rugby allowed its registration of the phrase “Geographical Center of North America” to lapse, Robinson registered it. A decal with a stylized compass rose now sits on the floor of a bar there.
- Center, N.D. (47.114854° N, 101.297808° W) Center is 233 kilometers (145 miles) southwest of Rugby and 146 kilometers (90 miles) west of Robinson. A New York geography professor identified Center as the center of the continent in late 2016.

Why do each of these towns make the claim to be the center of North America? How did they calculate the “center” of the continent?
- Rugby: In the 1930s, geographers made a cardboard cutout of North America, then balanced it on a pin to find its center. (Geolocation technology has progressed since then.)
- Robinson: Bar patrons “eyeballed North America’s center using a ruler on several different maps. ‘It was trial and error,’ said one citizen geographer. ‘I can’t give you an exact formula.’”
- Center: Peter Rogerson, a geographer at the University of Buffalo, “calculated the point at which the sum of squared distances to all other points in North America would be smallest—the mathematical definition of a geographic center.”
  - Rogerson published a paper on this exact calculation (including how to convert the calculation’s numbers into latitude and longitude) in 2015, and applied it to finding the center of U.S. states. Where’s the geographic center of your state?

What makes Rogerson’s calculation so intriguing? Check out our great activity “Investigating Map Projections” for some help.
- Rogerson, being a geographer, took the map projection into account. “Map projections transform Earth’s three-dimensional surface into two dimensions. The process always introduces some distortion, in shape, area, distance or direction.” Here’s a great video describing that distortion.
  - Presumably, the earlier geographers were using the most familiar projection, Mercator, which radically distorts size as latitude increases from the Equator. (Here’s a great visualization of the distortion.)
  - Rogerson used the azimuthal equidistant projection, in which all points on the map are at proportionately correct distances from the center point. (The azimuthal equidistant projection distorts shapes and distances between areas not connected to the center point.) This projection seems ideal for identifying a center, a lot of geographers like it and, yes, so does the Flat Earth Society. (Read more about them here.)

Why does being the center of North America matter?
- Rogerson says interest in the geographic center falls into two broad categories.
  - geographic studies. Some geographers may analyze central locations to help identify efficient transportation corridors. Others may use population centers to help identify areas of spatial interaction, such as convenient places for parks, health care facilities, or schools.
  - identity. “A second kind of interest is one that has to do with the rather strong level of attachment that individuals and communities can sometimes have with these locations.”
    - This is certainly true in the case of the good-natured feuding among the North Dakota towns, who use the title as a source of civic pride and tourism income. The towns have suggested they settle the dispute in uniquely American fashion: through court cases and a charity boxing match.