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Nation’s flags fly at geographic center
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FarkBELLE FOURCHE -- Helene Ledouble and Alexandre Martin drove into town Saturday to visit the Center of the Nation monument as they completed a tour the Black Hills.
The pair from Nice, France, happened onto ceremonies to dedicate the Avenue of Flags at the monument here.
"We never knew there was a celebration," Ledouble, an English teacher in France, said. "It's very American. Patriotism is very strong here."
She watched as all 50 state flags were raised in the order of the states' entry into the union.
Chamber of Commerce president Mark Leverington said, "May all these flags fly forever over the center of the nation."
Almost all of the flags were raised by members of the Northern Hills community who had lived in those states.
The year-old Center of the Nation monument is in Belle Fourche at the visitor center and Tri-State Museum on the banks of the Belle Fourche River.
For years, the geographic center of the 48 United States was in Kansas. The admission of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 brought the center to a barbed-wire enclosed private pasture 20 miles north of Belle Fourche.
That location -- plus or minus 10 miles in any direction, according to the National Geodetic Survey -- was dedicated on a blustery fall day amid high hopes it could become a tourist site.
Cactus and rattlesnakes along the gravel road on landscape that is almost table-flat brought a collapse of those hopes. A few people still pick up maps at the visitor center to make the trek north, but it's after seeing the granite compass rose monument.
It took some months of communication with federal officials, but approval was given by the National Geodetic Survey to have the official monument in Belle Fourche. The agency even brought a stainless steel plaque to go in the center of the big granite monument at dedication ceremonies in August of 2007.
Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce executive Teresa Schanzenbach said Saturday that moving the monument into town may be "cheating a little."
But Belle Fourche has been the city affiliated with the nation's center for nearly 50 years, she said.
Initial plans this year were to dedicate the Avenue of Flags along the new RiverWalk walking and bike path on Flag Day, June 14. The spring flood of the Belle Fourche River delayed construction until just about a year after the dedication of the granite monument.
Ledouble noted how the crowd stood as the color guard of the 842nd Engineer Co. raised the national flag for "The Star-Spangled Banner" and later for the singing of "God Bless America."
Students in France see such things as "old-fashioned," she said.
Indianapolis singer-songwriter Marcy Hook performed "Center of the Nation" to commemorate both the old site and the newer monument in Belle Fourche.
"This town seems untouched by the chaos of society; the natives and the cowboys cling to what used to be," she sang, "Center of the Nation."
Derrick Buchholz, left, Ferman Clarkson, and Clarkson's wife, Barbara, wait their turn to raise South Dakota's flag at the Center of the Nation Dedication on Saturday in Belle Fourche. The flags of the 50 states of the United States of America were raised during the dedication. (Photo by Ryan Soderlin, Journal staff)
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