The Texas County town of Plato was designated by the U.S. Census Bureau as the population center of the U.S. at a ceremony May 9.
“Missouri is the embodiment of America’s heartland, and the continued designation of a Missouri town as the center of the country’s population is symbolic of that,” Gov. Nixon said in a news release. “We’ve been proud to carry this designation for each census since 1980, and it helps show the hometown values that Missourians hold dear.”
Missouri Department of Natural Resources Director Sara Parker Pauley represented the governor at the event and received a commemorative survey marker from Census officials. The Division of Geology and Land Survey within the Department of Natural Resources has its headquarters in Rolla, in neighboring Phelps County.
Each decade, after it tabulates the decennial census, the Census Bureau calculates the center of population. The permanent location of the marker is about three miles from the exact coordinates of the mean center of population as measured by the National Geodetic Survey.
In the release, the Census Bureau explained how to visualize the mean center of population: “imagine a flat, weightless, and rigid map of the United States with all 308.7 million residents weighing exactly the same. The point at which the map would balance perfectly is the mean center of population.”
Since the first U.S. census was taken in 1790, the population center of the United States has gradually progressed westward with a more pronounced southerly pattern the past few decades. The 2000 center of population was Edgar Springs in Phelps County; the 1990 center of population was Steelville, in Crawford County; and the 1980 center of population was Gov. Nixon’s hometown of De Soto, in Jefferson County.
According to the www.census.gov, the new center of population now stands 873 miles from the first center, which was located near Chestertown in Kent County, Md.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided the precise latitude, longitude and elevation measurements for the designation. NOAA Project Manager Dave Doyle noted that this decade's mark would be the first to be set in stone, represented by a block of Missouri red granite.
“We hope everyone will visit these marks,” Doyle said in the release. “They're fun to find, and each one tells a unique story about our nation's history.”[[In-content Ad]]
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