This New York Town Marks the Center Of the State, Did You Know This?
Where is the center of New York State? Some might say Manhattan is the center of it all with Broadway, Times Square, Wall Street and millions of tourists flocking to the Big Apple each year. I'm not talking about the center of attraction or even population. I'm talking geographically.
New Yorkers can't seem to agree where Upstate New York is, do you think we can settle on the central location in the State? Not likely but let's see.
More than 150 years ago an astronomer named Charles Piazzi Smyth determined that the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt marks the center of the earth. So, how do we find the center of New York?
According to Smithsonian Magazine, finding the geographical center of a country or state is not an exact science due to 'irregular shapes wrapped around an enormous sphere'. Let's see how close we can get in New York.
The United States Geological Survey might be our best hope for determining the center of New York State. Even they admit that, because there is no generally accepted definition of a geographic center, there may be several geographic centers. Their approximate center of New York is east of Syracuse and north of Binghamton in the town of Madison!
Six miles away, in the town of Pratt's Hollow, NY, there is a United Methodist Church with a sign on the building. The sign reads Pratts Hollow Geographical Center of N.Y.S. Done! Mystery solved! They have the sign, so they win!
It is safe to say that you wouldn't be wrong if you said Madison is the center of New York but if you want that Instagram picture, I'd go to Pratts Hollow, NY.
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