Lebanon, Kansas: Still the ‘center of America’

Instantly, during a television timeout of the 2021 Super Bowl game, the “middle of nowhere” became the “middle of everywhere.” 

Superstar Bruce Springsteen’s Jeep commercial, which was filmed near the small village of Lebanon, Kansas, flipped the script.

 

The camera zoomed in on a tiny-house-sized wooden chapel that is located in the center of the original 48 “contiguous and conterminous” United States of America.

 

So, now, in a very real sense, all roads do eventually lead to a historic marker in a small park located in north-central Kansas.

 

In 1918, a U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey team determined that America’s geographic center point of the 48 states was near Lebanon, on a hog farm owned by John Ludwig Grieb. 

Grieb’s land was not the most ideal location for a “tourist attraction,” so an alternate site in the vicinity was selected as the point to establish “Geographical Center Park” as the newly designated “hub of America.” 

Shortly thereafter, up came a roar of protest from the blue bloods of Boston, Mass., according to historian Dr. Jeffrey P. Stone. The Bostonians avowed that their beloved “Beantown” was the historic “hub” of the nation…world and universe, not some pipsqueak, prairie town. 

Dr. Stone said the federal survey agency responded by “pointing a finger of scorn” at Boston, saying it wasn’t “even the center of its own state.” 

The Topeka State Journal piled on, stating that Boston’s claim “as a hub” didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Editors said that any “ideal hub of population, government and industry should also be the geographic center.” 

In actuality, the science associated with the 1918 survey was a tad wobbly. There were no data-crunching computers to bank on back then. The pin-point precision of the applied mathematics was somewhat murky. 

Thus, the movers and shakers of “Greater Lebanon” agreed to “seize the day.” In 1940, more than 100 members of the Lebanon Commercial Club (akin to a chamber of commerce) formed the Lebanon Hub Club. 

The Hub Club’s specific goal was “publicizing the town’s unique proximity to the geographic center of the nation,” Dr. Stone said. 

The first step was to erect a pyramid-shaped monument, built of native limestone and dedicated in 1941.

 

The State of Kansas pitched in and built a one-mile stretch of blacktop from the main road to the monument. The Hub Club added the mini-chapel, capable of accommodating an intimate gathering of six-to-eight people at a time. 

A small motel, named the Exact U.S. Center Motel-Cafe, was built nearby in 1955. Its owner was Moses Lee Johnson, who was identified as “a businessman from North Carolina.” 

Dr. Stone said Johnson helped draw local attention to the pending “annexation of Alaska” as the 49th state in 1959. What would Alaska do to shift the “balance point” of the geographic center of the nation? 

Responding to Johnson’s concern, the “ever-vigilant Hub Club” re-mobilized to defend Lebanon’s geographic renown, Dr. Stone wrote. “Emergency town meetings were held, and the mayor vowed to prevent the heart of the nation from being ‘spirited away’” to another place, somewhere in South Dakota. 

“The Hub Club organized a tongue-in-cheek posse of around-the-clock armed watchmen to protect its monument from being ‘spirited away.’” 

When Hawaii was granted U.S. statehood later in 1959, the geography of the United States changed yet again…but Lebanon, Kansas, remains forever as America’s “middle ground.” 

And the people will come.