![]() ![]() In the early 1970s, John Gesicki, owner of Gesicki's General Store and Tavern, petitioned the U.S. Poniatowski is comprised of a church, a bar, and a couple of houses. Two are under water, one is in northwestern China, and the other one is just down the road from Poniatowski, Wisconsin. To further torque your topology tripping, plan to spend a minute at the "Exact Center of the Northern Half of the Western Hemisphere." A hemisphere halfway point occurs at only four spots on Earth. Halfway picnickers at Poniatowski's Geological Marker for the "Exact Center of the Northern Half of the Western Hemisphe No one thought to build a 45th Parallel National Highway, so visiting a sequence of markers can be a minor odyssey along perpendicular farm roads and weed choked point-of-interest pull-offs. So Frank also placed two "Half Way North" plaques at what he felt was the proper latitude, one north of Beaver, Wisconsin,and the other north of Menominee, Michigan. The Earth is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator because of its rotation - which shifts the halfway line slightly north. One, south of Peshtigo, is diplomatically labeled "Theoretical Half Way Point" because Frank knew that the 45th Parallel is not, in fact, exactly halfway. Noyes put up plaques around his hometown of Marinette, Wisconsin to mark the halfway line. Green highway signs, historical markers, plaques on rocks, even billboards, have been erected to remind travelers they are at a meaningful spot, even if it isn't any more meaningful than the same spot five, or ten, or five hundred miles east or west of it.įor example, in the 1930s, newspaper editor Frank E. Westward, other American towns and civic boosters followed Perry's lead. Engraved on it are the words, "This stone marks latitude 45 degrees north, halfway from the equator to the pole." It's north of the town of Perry, Maine, which is about as far east as you can get in the U.S. In 1896, an enterprising, dare-we-say visionary, American put up a monument - a tiny hunk of pink granite, now worn and stained with age - to point it out. One place to start is the first of the U.S. But anyone can put together a 45th Parallel travel adventure. The 45th Parallel, a line of latitude halfway to the Equator and halfway to the North Pole, invisibly beckons map lovers, or those attempting to calibrate their GPS devices. What satisfied Americans last week now only satisfies barbarians with socialized economies and feckless dreams.Īnd yet, for some of us, there is an invisible belt across the upper reaches of the Lower 48 (and parts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario as well) that proves that halfway is far enough. We are told that we must never stop growing - emotionally, spiritually, financially - that we can, will, MUST pursue ever-distant perfection or be left in the dust. We are reminded daily, in everything from Lexus advertising inserts to Tony Robbins infomercials, that halfway is for losers. Cadott, Wisconsin marks its halfway point in the town park the real spot is a few miles north.
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