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Geographic Center of the United States
The middle of all fifty states, in South Dakota
When Alaska and Hawaii joined the union in 1959, the geographic center of the whole country jumped far to the northwest, landing in the rangeland of northwestern South Dakota. The official center of all fifty states sits in an empty pasture about 20 miles north of the town of Belle Fourche, where adding the enormous mass of Alaska pulled the nation's balance point well away from its old Kansas location.
Belle Fourche marks the spot with a granite compass-rose monument in town, since the true point lies on private ranchland out among the buttes and grass at the edge of the Black Hills. It is a vivid reminder of just how much Alaska weighs in the shape of the United States - enough to shift the center of the entire country by hundreds of miles.