In the middle of America, there’s a place that still believes in the middle of America

By Barry Neild, CNN

Lebanon, Kansas (CNN) — To find the very middle of America, you have to drive a long way — but it’s worth every undulating mile of blacktop.

It’s a journey that perfectly captures the dream of the American road trip. Wide-open highways stretch across vast acres of arable emptiness. Pit-stop towns crouch under towering skies. Lonely radio transmitters broadcast into the constantly shifting air.

What awaits you when you get there is surprising. Not some bombastic monument to the mighty nation that spreads out in all directions, but a modest set of landmarks and a sentiment so positive in a world of turmoil that it’ll stick with you all the way home.

The exact location of America’s center is open to debate. Metaphorically, “Middle America” covers the cultural experiences of more or less everyone living between New York and Los Angeles, or just the average American — whoever that may be.

Geographically, there are several contenders. Various formulations set down after Alaska and Hawaii were added to the mix in 1959 have the center hopping all over the Dakotas. But, as the US Department of the Interior dryly noted in a 1964 report: “There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center, and no completely satisfactory method for determining it.”

For decades, however, there was. Back near the start of the 20th century, when the United States was confined to 48 states stretching from sea to shining sea, enterprising experts at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey figured it out by the scientific method of cutting out a cardboard map of the country — and balancing it on the head of a pin to find its center of gravity.

That pivot point was in northern Kansas, just outside a town called Lebanon. And over the next half century, a place that raised the same corn, wheat and livestock as every other community for days in any direction, enjoyed a small and unexpected tourism boom.

A homecoming

There’s no easy way to get there, but the 260-mile drive west from Kansas City, the closest major population center, is a trip back in time. Past Topeka, I-70 passes a historical marker sign informing motorists that the next eight miles were the first section of interstate in the United States. Its 1956 opening kicked off President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s program to shrink America with highways.

If they were intended as a teaser for what was to come, those eight miles do the job. Kansas may have a reputation for being flat, but this section rises and falls in a straight line to the shimmering horizon. Above, depending on the day, the sky is stacked with impending weather, the meteorology changing faster than the 75 mph speed limit.

I-70 only takes you so far. The route dives deeper into the grid of country roads that cover rural Kansas, passing through the river town of Manhattan or “the Little Apple,” and then Clay Center — another mid-point, this one marking halfway between Los Angeles and New York.

Smaller communities fly by, with grain elevators, water towers, red-sided barns, shuttered Texaco gas stations and fields as far as the eye can see. For anyone who has long idealized the American heartlands, this feels like a homecoming.

There’s a classic US road trip attraction just short of the main event. In Cawker, about 25 minutes’ drive from the geographical center, a gazebo by the side of Route 24 shelters the unlikely spectacle that puts this tiny town on the map: the world’s largest ball of twine.

Made from, according to the marquees advertising its presence, more than 8,500,000 feet of sisal string, this hulking presence weighs in at over 27,000 pounds. It was begun in 1953 by local farmer Frank Stuber and has been displayed in Cawker since 1961. It fought off competition from a rival twine behemoth in Minnesota to claim its current title in 1982.

Today, it’s such a defining feature of the town that even the bulbous tank of the local water tower is decorated like a ball of sisal. And, judging by the names filling out the visitor book, a steady stream of travelers drop by to take in its heady toolshed aroma and add their own length of twine.

Unexpected serenity

The dead center of the “lower 48” finally rolls into view down a spur of asphalted road, just off Highway 281, north of Lebanon. Despite the somewhat arbitrary nature of its selection — the pin and cardboard, plus the fact it was later relocated by a few hundred feet to avoid being in the middle of private property — this patch of Kansas evokes a strong sense of place.

There’s a small, white one-room chapel, a stand of pine trees, a collection of covered picnic tables and a springy playground toy for kids. A few signposts proclaim the location’s importance. A marker details the coordinates (Lat 39° 50’, Long 93° 35’) of what is now known as the “historic center,” and a pole carries both the flag of Kansas and Old Glory.

Over the road, behind a barbed wire fence, three large wooden crucifixes stand sentinel.

Through the permanently unlocked door of the chapel, eight seats face a lectern carrying a Bible. On the pine-effect wall behind it, another American flag, cut out in the shape of the country, sits behind a small wooden crucifix beneath the words “Pray America.”

The tiny chapel’s interior is a place of unexpected serenity. Sheltered from the winds outside — both metaphorical and the gusts sweeping in across the Kansas plains — and with sunlight muted by net curtains, it’s a good place to spend a few moments of reflection about the world outside.

That was what Bruce Springsteen suggested when he visited this very spot in 2021 for a Super Bowl commercial advertising Jeep. Beautifully filmed in what looks like the frozen depths of winter, it shows him lighting a candle as he intones a sermon about a divided America meeting in the center.

“We need the middle, we just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground,” he says, his voice trembling — perhaps because he’s been driving an open-top Jeep across rural Kansas in January. Madness!

“So, we can get there, we can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness, and there’s hope on the road up ahead.”

It’s a powerful message, enhanced by the atmospheric shots of the US Center Chapel and the surrounding frozen landscape, but undercut somewhat by the fact The Boss is actually just trying to sell us a car.

‘We’ve come so far and so fast’

Other visitors have equally poignant thoughts about the significance of this spot. Sam Gesy, a wind turbine technician from Vancouver, Washington, puts it eloquently during his pilgrimage to the site.

“America started off as such a small country, just a portion of this continent, and we’ve come so far and so fast,” he says, reflecting on the journey that brought him and his country to this spot. “And we have fought for it and we have bartered for it to make a dream happen.

“As a second-generation immigrant, you kind of appreciate it — what we’ve done as a country and what we stand for and the rights that other places might not have.”

Gesy says he’s visiting the center before driving all the way back to Vancouver on an epic road trip across the Rocky Mountains, having just flown into a town a couple of hours away to buy — Springsteen, take note — a new Ford Bronco.

While you’re out here smack in the middle, it’s worth calling in to nearby Lebanon, which gathers a few hundred souls in a criss-cross of residential roads set around a Main Street. A giant row of grain elevators dominates the skyline to the south. It’s a well-worn place with a visibly deep sense of community pride.

A vintage Standard gas station, pristinely restored, serves as a visitor center, offering information about how the town took its name from the Bible, relocated closer to a railroad and later assumed responsibility for keeping watch over the geographical center.

Main Street Mercantile & Grocery, Lebanon’s independent store, is the place to pick up souvenirs and just about anything else. There’s an array of T-shirts emblazoned with “Lebanon, KS, smack dab in the center of the red, white and blue” as well as hats declaring: “Eat beef.”

Dealing with a steady stream of customers, most of whom she’s on first-name terms with, is store worker Sharon Kettenberg. She moved here 40 years ago, raised her four children in the town, and now wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.

“You can’t pick a better place to live,” she says. “The nearest Walmart is 60 miles away — and that’s OK!”

There are adversities, she says. The surrounding farms could use more rain, and the town was recently stunned by a fatal house fire that brought the community together in support of its bereaved survivor. But there’s love enough to spare.

“It’s like a family, living in a town this size. You feel like God has put his blessings in the center of America and we want that to spread across the country.”

Small place, big world

On the other side of Main Street, septuagenarian Linda Scott presides over Lebanon’s library, a cheerful space of well-stocked bookshelves, desktop computers, comfy chairs and communal baking equipment. It’s a social hub with movie screenings for the old folks, storytelling for the kids and board game evenings for everyone.

Its greatest asset is clearly Scott, who grew up nearby — very close to the geographical center — on a farm as the eldest of seven children. She remembers earning nickels for treats by selling eggs, milk and cream in town, and the days when more people came to visit.

“There was a motel there and everything was thriving,” she says. “But when Hawai’i and Alaska joined, it lessened the interest.”

Scott moved away from Lebanon and worked for years as a teacher, eventually returning to her hometown in the 1990s after buying her late grandmother’s home.

Growing up in the middle, she recalls, meant being in a place that sometimes felt far removed from the changes advancing on the rest of the world — something she says is worth aspiring to in today’s permanently logged-in world.

“We used to get everything two or three years after everyone else, even the music — and that was OK,” she says. “These days, you have instant everything, and in my view, having instant everything is destructive.”

Like many small-town children, Scott dreamed of leaving to see the world. She says she had no real concept of living right in the heart of the country and viewed it as a place to escape from.

Although she never made it abroad, her travels across America left her with an abiding love for the place she still called home.

“Growing up, I didn’t have a feeling that the center of the United States was anything special,” she says. “But over my life, I have come to the position that when you’re a small, small place in a big, big world, this is an exceptionally unique place to be.”

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