This is a list of geographic centers of each U.S. state and inhabited

territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

. The geographic center of the United States is northeast of Belle Fourche in Butte County, South Dakota , while that of the contiguous 48 states is near

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus lie ...

Smith County, Kansas Smith County (standard abbreviation: SM) is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,570. Its county seat is Smith Center. The county is named in memory of Maj. J. Nelson Smith, who was part of ...

. The geographic center of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

lies near

Rugby, North Dakota Rugby is a city in, and the county seat of, Pierce County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 2,509 at the 2020 census, making it the 19th largest city in North Dakota. Rugby was founded in 1886. Rugby is often billed as the geog ...

, though this designation has no official status. In 2017, a new calculation of the geographic center of North America placed it near the town of

Center, North Dakota Center is a city in Oliver County, North Dakota, United States. It is the county seat of, and the only incorporated place in, Oliver County. The population was 588 at the 2020 census. History Center was founded in 1902. The city was named from ...

Historic list of geographic centers

The list given below has been only slightly modified since it was first produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in the early 1920s. At that time, the center for a state was found by suspending a cardboard cutout of the state by a string, and then drawing a vertical line from the suspension point. After rotating the cutout 90 degrees and drawing another vertical line from the new suspension point, the intersection of the two vertical lines was used as the geographic center. The result is dependent upon the type of projection used.

Modern list of geographic centers

Although there have been different definitions offered for the geographic center, an intuitive one, and one used by the USGS, is "the center of gravity of the surface, or that point on which the surface of the area would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness." An updated list of geographic centers using this definition (which is equivalent to the state's

centroid In mathematics and physics, the centroid, also known as geometric center or center of figure, of a plane figure or solid figure is the arithmetic mean position of all the points in the surface of the figure. The same definition extends to any ...

) is given below. It was derived by minimizing the sum of squared great circle distances from all points of land in a state (including islands, but not coastal waters, following the earlier practice of the USGS). It represents a slight improvement over the list originally published. The

geographic center of the contiguous United States The geographic center of the United States is a point approximately north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota at . It has been regarded as such by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey (NGS) since the additions of Alaska and Hawaii to the United State ...

, determined in this way, is at ; this is 5.4 miles from

Agra, Kansas Agra is a city in Phillips County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 208. History Agra was first settled in 1888, and incorporated in 1904. Agra was a station on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific ...

, 5.7 miles from Kensington, Kansas, and 26.9 great circle miles west of the longstanding designated site near Lebanon, Kansas.

Geographic centers of the U.S. territories

Very little information exists about the geographic centers of the U.S. territories. In a geological survey of all geographic centers in the U.S., the U.S. Department of the Interior did not measure the geographic centers of the U.S. territories.https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039437/report.pdf "Geographic centers of the United States." U.S. Department of the Interior. Retrieved June 2019. Similarly, the USGS does not include the territories in its list of geographic centers.https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/Elevations-Distances/elvadist.html ‘’Elevations and Distances in the United States.’’ USGS. Retrieved June 2019. In terms of each territory’s land area, only one territory,

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

, has a confirmed geographic center. There are also official geographic centers of territorial exclusive economic zones, though those geographic centers are based on a territory's

territorial waters The term territorial waters is sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potent ...

(not land area).

Notes

References

Works cited

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Geographic Centers Of The United States

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...