P.N.ZOYTLOW

On a day as close to the Summer Solstice as could be arranged by this Observer and The Driver (who happens to be a geographic romantic), an exploratory effort was launched to get to the Truth of the Matter Concerning the Geographic Center of the North American Continent. To do so meant to spend long hours on the roadways of North Dakota, a place of ineffable mystery unusual in the United States. Many may look to Monument Valley of Arizona or the Staked Plains of Texas as American Loci of Mystery. The most consistent mystery is the near entirety of the State of North Dakota, a topic too broad for a Field Report.

The small city of Rugby in the North Central region of that state, population at the last census approximately 3000, was founded in the 1880s as a point on the Great Northern Railroad. The oddly English name reflects the tastes of railroad executives of the time who wished to attach European connotations to places on the frontier in hopes of reassuring immigrants, the hoped-for developers of the Great Plains. Rugby became a center of Scandinavian and Germanic settlement as did most of North Dakota.

What does it matter just where the center of a continent is?  In this case, one must be curious about curiosity itself, for there seems no other reason for anyone to bother finding the midpoint of a continent other than its merely being there.  We must assume that the United States Geological Survey had a reason for establishing, in 1931, the middle of the North American Continent. That reasoning is admittedly flawed, for many authorities agree that the middle of any continent is quite likely impossible to determine. To do so one must assume that the continent is a flat disc, like a dinner plate. Imagine that you must now balance that plate perfectly on a nail. Probably you would hold your breath and avoid moving your hands too quickly lest some wisp of moving air disturb the project. But these are minor problems when it comes to balancing a continent. Still, at Rugby, there stands a stone monument with a golden ball on top which might, in theory,  suspend a static and centralized continent at its midpoint. Forget about the disturbing questions: just what are the boundaries of North America?  What about islands off-shore thought to be part of the continent? What happens if the shape of the continent changes due to geological activity such as volcanos, earthquakes, or deposits at river deltas?  The unsatisfying nature of this “center” was underscored by a nearby directional sign which pointed out that the visitor stood 1450 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Canada, 2090 miles north of Acapulco in Mexico and, respectively, 1100 miles east a point in Washington State and 1500 miles west of a place on the coast of Maine. Purists would want to know how Panama and Alaska figured into this calculation.

One has the sense that Rugby has made its peace with these questions.  At the Cornerstone Cafe, on whose parking lot the monument to the Center stands, this Observer, assisted by The Driver, attempted to interview some locals as to the significance of sitting scant yards from the balancing point where the mass of cities, rivers, mountains, swamps, and suburbs that made up a continent might by perched on the golden metal ball.  However, authentic locals were not in abundance. One learned that the Cornerstone Cafe was run by a family recently arrived from California and lately self-reinvented as Dakotans. An employee (from the South) refilling ketchup sqeeze bottles grumbled about the cold winters and the coldness of Dakotans. She spoke of a forthcoming visit to the hot and humid lands back home where one could acquire a “savage tan” as she put it. These people had little interest or affection for Rugby’s fame as a singular geological place excepting the three elderly men seated in a booth, throwing dice with a leather cup. Yes, they nodded, this is the place, though one recalled how the monument had once been on the other side of the highway and had to be moved during some construction to widen the road.  It did not seem to matter where it was placed. These gentlemen were reluctant to talk much about this feature of their hometown, perhaps an indifference born of many years of answering questions from oddly intrigued visitors from the non-centered portions of the continent (meaning everywhere else).   Furthermore, added one, a deeply-tanned man with a Cenex Oil cap, the true center wasn’t in Rugby at all: it was to the south, somewhere near a place called Balta.

This was not news, but you did want to hear it from the locals. Their diffidence disappointed the Observer who had hoped for a sort of swagger by these True Centrists. It begged a question: why this concern for geographical centers anyway?   Nowhere in the literature of the various earth sciences was there any suggestion that any of it mattered in any sense.   A zero.

To the Rugbyites who spoke of the matter at all, the duality of sharing the truth and selling mementos about Rugby-as-Center was not a problem. At the tourist office across the highway from the cafe, the polite staff readily concurred that the Center was near Balta, specifically in a lake west of that community. Supposedly there was a marker in the lake which might be visible if you had a boat and if the water was low enough this year. They were most helpful and even provided a small map which would direct purists (which we were) to the spot.  Whatever Rugby really was, it was not the home of charlatans and cover-up artists.

So, on to Balta. Fifteen or so miles south along the corn and wheat and we were there. Population about 62 and declining. No humans or dogs were in sight. Noted as one enters the town was a sign announcing “Balta. Gateway to Adventure and Beyond.”  Of the village’s four or five streets, three were named after places in Poland (Lublin) or Ukraine ( Kiev, Volga). At the crossroads, a tavern, and down the street a church without a name, presumably Catholic.  A small concrete figure of a seated African American holding a potted plant was the only representation of a human being in the place. [Digression: why does a town which the census reports as 98.6% Caucasian have a Black garden statue as its most singular adornment?] The Black man with the red hat and the blue shirt at the Center of the Continent!  Who would have imagined such an arguable incongruity there, holding up the center of things? But, recall the earlier statement that North Dakota is a place of mystery.

Yes, Balta is as desolate and as stunningly empty as much of North Dakota. Quiet to the point of soundlessness. Lingering in Balta is uncomfortable. On the southwestern corner of tin the center of this village stands an old school bell mounted on a slab of concrete. “Balta, Home of the Bobcats” and the inscription:

“Balta School Bell. Dedicated To All Alumni Who have Answered  Its Call and Carried Its Message Throughout The Years”

With all this signage at the main intersection, would one not have also hoped for some show of interest in Balta’s critical location in the grand scheme of planetary relationships?  Nor were there any signs pointing the way to that swamped marker in some shallow pond somewhere west of town, the area that must be the “beyond” that sign announced. Beyond: there be Monsters in those Parts. Somehow, walking into the Balta Bar and Grill on the corner across from the school bell seemed intrusive and not likely to yield any more Centrist boosterism than Rugby had shown.

The time was up. Most of it had been spent in that false center, Rugby, and not much more seemed required in the disturbing solitude of Balta. In the souvenir shops in Rugby one learned that the abstract center was a draw for tourists, those crossing the vast continent who wanted to contemplate, in some way, their momentary centrality in time and space. It was less than that for those who lived there.

Returning, away from the Center, The Observer and The Driver were again  immersed themselves in the expansiveness of the landscape. The shadows of small plump clouds in procession across the fields, the flatness and occasional undulations of this open country, the earth-toned ribbons of roads under a sky so vast that you knew this was a planet, a ball in the cosmos.