by Dan Barry
On a windswept day in October 1959, more than 100 people gathered in the pasture for the raising of the American flag up a 40-foot pole that volunteers had set in concrete. A band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a visiting dignitary spoke of the many tourists surely to follow.
But in the mid-1960s the state made some road improvements just north of Belle Fourche. The new Highway 85 bypassed the center of the nation by 7.8 miles; the old Highway 85 became the road rarely traveled, the nation’s center the attraction not attracting.
After a while, some road maps and guides began placing the center at a scenic rest area about 10 miles to the northeast, on a rise just off the main highway, simply because it featured a sign that essentially said the nation’s center was over there somewhere.
Adding to the confusion was Belle Fourche, now billing itself as the “Center of the Nation.” But the price of this boast was constantly explaining to persistent tourists that the actual center was on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, 13 miles up Highway 85 and 7.8 miles along an unpaved road. And don’t expect any snow-cones.
By 1999, the year that Teresa Schanzenbach became director of the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce, vandalism had forced the closing of that scenic rest area; local officials had tired of replacing the “Center of the Nation” signs stolen along Highway 85; and the 40-foot flagpole had long since vanished. Only a short red fencepost marked the spot; no flag attached.
“It had lost its pizzazz,” Ms. Schanzenbach says.
For years Belle Fourche struggled with how to capitalize on its nearness to the center of the nation. There were meetings, and fund-raising golf tournaments, and more meetings, and grumblings about how even Rugby, N.D., the “Geographical Center of North America,” had a 15-foot stone obelisk to mark the spot.
Finally, last summer, the Chamber of Commerce unveiled a “Center of the Nation” monument planted in the grass behind its office: a massive map of the United States enclosed in a compass rose, designed by a local artist and made of 54,000 pounds of South Dakota granite. American tourists could stand on their home state and pose for photographs memorializing their visit to somewhere near the nation’s center.
Ms. Schanzenbach says 2,200 tourists stopped at the Belle Fourche visitors center in September, compared with about 200 the September before—all thanks to the monument. Although staff members and handouts explain that the actual center is a good half-hour’s drive away, she says 90 percent of the visitors choose to pose for photos at the monument and then carry on to Deadwood, Mount Rushmore and attractions beyond.
“We’re not pretending to be the actual center,” she says. “We’re providing a convenience.”
But Ms. Schanzenbach knows what 90 of 100 visitors do not experience. She has been to the center; in fact, she has made sure that a flag again flies there. And she encourages others to go.
You slip through the barbed wire and follow a worn path toward the flag, past dandelions and wildflowers sprouting from the scrub, with nothing before you but sky, pasture and a solitary flag, its reds and whites torn at the ends by winter’s winds. And there, planted in the spring-softened ground, near pocks left by hooves and shoes, is a disc-shaped marker left in 1962 by the government’s geodetic surveyors.
In the center of the disc it says: CENTER.
Hidden songbirds provide the only sound; their chatter recalls the giggles of unseen Munchkins. But then, in this remote, still place, there comes a strange sense of reassurance: that in this time of uncertain war and near-certain recession, of home foreclosures and gas at $4 a gallon, at least somewhere in this nation a center holds.
Acknowledgments
I never traveled alone. So many New York Times colleagues were with me in spirit that I should have been driving a Greyhound bus.
Often beside me were some of the best photographers and videographers in journalism. In addition to Ángel Franco, Nicole Bengiveno, Kassie Bracken and Todd Heisler, they included Fred Conrad, Richard Perry, and Monica Almeida, who tolerated me during a long trip through the Pacific Northwest that somehow ended inside the iconic globe of the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Among the editors providing visual guidance over the years were Jessica Dimson, Beth Flynn, Becky Lebowitz, Meaghan Looram, Michele McNally, Cornelius Schmid, David Scull, Justine Simons and John Woo.
Also along for the ride were former national editor Suzanne Daley and former deputy editor David Firestone, who helped to conceive and nurture the column; national editors Rick Berke, Sam Sifton, Alison Mitchell and Marc Lacey; and deputy editors Rick Lyman, David Halbfinger, Dean Murphy and Chuck Strum, who recognized in my wanderings the hint of “Sullivan’s Travels.” Sitting in the back, occasionally giving directions, were executive editors Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, and the publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (who paid for the gas). I am especially thankful to deputy managing editor Matt Purdy and senior editor Christine Kay for providing a much-needed road map—and, again, to Cate Doty, whose keen sense of what makes a good story helped to inform the This Land sensibility.
Many copy editors prevented me from veering off the road. I routinely implored them to save me from national embarrassment, and time and again they did, especially Mindy Matthews, Jen McDonald, Eric Nagourney, Joe Rogers, Karron Skog, Kaly Soto and Rory Tolan.
I am grateful to the dedicated people at Black Dog & Leventhal for hopping aboard, especially my gifted editor, Becky Koh, the champion of this collection; Frances Soo Ping Chow; Melanie Gold; Betsy Hulsebosch; Kara Thornton; Ruiko Tokunaga; and Kris Tobiassen. Also with me were Alex Ward, the editorial director for book development at the Times, and Todd Shuster, my longtime friend and agent.
Throughout my travels, I never needed a GPS or any other navigational device; I had my wife, Mary Trinity, and two daughters, Nora and Grace, to show me the way home. More than anyone, Mary made This Land possible. She provided invaluable counsel on every column I wrote—so much so that my editors at the Times would often ask: What does Mary think?
Lastly, I thank all those who gave their time, and more, to this gawky stranger from New York. I see us all now—the Louisiana shrimper and the Massachusetts preacher, the Connecticut stripper and the Florida Jesus, the Rhode Island wise guy, the Missouri schoolgirl, the rehabilitated Illinois drug dealer—gathered around a table at Donna’s Diner in Elyria, Ohio. Donna is topping off our cups of coffee as we tell our American stories and shake our heads in wonder.
Photography Credits
Ángel Franco/The New York Times: 2, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 28, 29, 40, 42, 70, 72, 74, 77, 80, 82, 112, 114, 116, 120, 124, 126, 128, 131, 133, 137, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 179, 200, 203, 205, 242, 244, 276, 278, 280, 284, 287, 315, 321, 322, 328, 362, 367, 386, 389
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times: 47, 51, 53, 56, 146, 209, 211, 214, 216, 218, 220, 227, 228, 247, 251, 252, 260, 263, 265, 269, 270, 288, 292, 296, 298, 301, 302, 304, 307, 333, 337, 341, 357, 359
Todd Heisler/The New York Times: 65, 99, 102, 104, 189, 191, 193, 375, 377, 379
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times: 84, 87
Monica Almeida/The New York Times: 141, 223, 224
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times: 350
Emon Hassan for The New York Times: 61, 63
Frances Roberts for The New York Times: 33, 34
Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times: 59
Andrew White for The New York Times: 150, 161
Eric Thayer for The New York Times: 181
Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times: 310, 312
Joshua Bright for The New York Times: 348
Jessica Hill for The New York Times: 368, 370
Mary Murphy: 94
Alden Pellett/Associated Press: 122
Rob Godfrey/Twitter @robgodfrey: 185
Courtesy Marlane Carr: 342
New York State Archives and New York State Museum: 364
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