We were sitting in a room full of people in Nebraska. David asked, “Hey, where is the center of the United States?” He thought that it must be somewhere nearby-ish, but no one knew. “Oh well,” we thought, and just moved on with the conversation.
When we left town a couple of days later, we decided to backtrack from our originally planned route and go through Hastings, Nebraska to check out where Kool-Aid was invented because my grown nephew is a Kool-Aid nut. We found the old storefront and sent him pictures, but we were disappointed it wasn’t a museum. There was nothing we could go inside to see. But we were still happy to be able to send him photos. However, we were sad later when we found out we just needed to go to the Hastings Museum and that’s where the Kool-Aid display and memorabilia is. Darn. Hopefully there’s a next time.
After leaving Hastings, we just headed south down Highway 281. All we were thinking was that we were heading towards home in Texas, taking backroads as usual. Suddenly, we see a sign showing, “Geographic Center of the Continental USA.”
No wonder the Nebraskans didn’t know where it is, it’s in Kansas!
“What?!” we both exclaimed at the same time! “It’s right here! We have to see it!”
So, we turned up the little country road about a mile north of Lebanon, Kansas, and in only about another mile, there it was. It has a little park with a picnic area and tiny white chapel with a few benches inside, and of course the sign showing the designation. In fact, there several signs and markers.
We got out and explored all of it, it didn’t take long since it’s small, but definitely worth seeing so you can say you’ve been there. Plus, the location is a perfect spot, a beautiful, serene, prairie setting, views as far as you can see. It’s a very relaxing and enjoyable spot, the only thing that would have made it better was if we had brought a picnic lunch.
We found out more information when we headed on south into the town of Lebanon and stopped by their adorable little visitor center which you can tell was an old gas station. Inside was a sign explaining that the geographic center designation was created from a “geodetic survey” in 1898. At the time it was the center of the U.S. but once Alaska and Hawaii gained statehood it was then changed to the center of the continental or contiguous or lower 48, however you want to refer to it.
We were absolutely thrilled, and in awe of how simply we were led there to see the answer to our question. We were reminded once again of the importance of keeping our eyes open for the unexpected in unlikely places along the backroads.
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