Geographic Center of Texas

Duane's take

Now, this one comes straight off the official marker. I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Five miles northwest of where you're sittin' right now is a point.

An imaginary point. No monument, no flagpole, no brass star set in concrete. Just coordinates, floatin' in the air above McCulloch County, that happen to divide the entire state of Texas into four equal areas.

That is the geographic center of Texas, and the numbers that surround it are the kind that make your brain do a slow double-take. Let's talk distance. From that invisible bull's-eye, it is four hundred and thirty-seven miles in a straight line to the most westerly point on the Rio Grande above El Paso.

Four hundred and twelve miles north to the corner of the Panhandle near Texline. Four hundred and one miles south to the Rio Grande below Brownsville. And three hundred and forty-one miles east to the Sabine River near Burkeville.

Now, if you wanted to walk a straight line from the top of Texas to the bottom (north to south), you'd cover eight hundred and one miles. East to west? Seven hundred and seventy-three.

This is not a small place, friend. The perimeter (the fence line, if you will, of the whole operation) runs four thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven miles. And inside that perimeter?

Two hundred and sixty-seven thousand, three hundred and thirty-nine square miles. That is seven point four percent of the entire nation's total area wrapped up in one state. To put that in terms a campfire crowd can appreciate: fifteen of the fifty states could be tucked inside Texas' borders and you'd still have more than a thousand square miles left over.

A thousand square miles of elbow room after you've packed in fifteen states. Now, the counties. There are two hundred and fifty-four of them.

The biggest is Brewster, down in southwest Texas, at six thousand, two hundred and eight square miles (bigger than the entire state of Connecticut, on its own). The smallest is Rockwall up in northeast Texas, at a humble one hundred and forty-seven square miles. One state.

Two hundred and fifty-four counties. The range between the biggest and the smallest is enough to swallow a New England state whole. And where are you standing while all this geography swirls around you?

At an altitude of one thousand, five hundred and forty-five feet. Modest. Middle-of-the-road.

Fitting, for the center of things. But Texas doesn't stay modest for long. Elevations in this state run from sea level along six hundred and twenty-four miles of Gulf Coast all the way up to eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty-one feet at the top of Guadalupe Peak in the Guadalupe Mountains.

That's a climb and a half. The terrain that fills all that space is something else entirely. You've got the subtropical Rio Grande Valley down south.

The trackless Great Plains spreading out to the north and west. The lush forests of East Texas. And then the Trans-Pecos, rugged and defiant, where mountain ranges push ninety separate peaks a mile or more into the sky.

Ninety peaks. Just thrustin' upward like they've got something to prove. But here's the detail that tends to stop people cold.

Perhaps nowhere are Texas' contrasts more pronounced than in rainfall. Along the Sabine River, average annual rainfall tops fifty-six inches (nearly as much as Miami). Travel to the extreme west of the state, and that number drops below eight inches.

As little as Phoenix. Same state. Same borders.

Miami's lushness and Phoenix's desert thirst, separated by those seven hundred and seventy-three east-to-west miles. So that imaginary point five miles northwest of here isn't just a geographic curiosity. It's the still center of a place that refuses, in just about every direction you point, to be anything less than extraordinary.

What the marker says

Five miles northwest is the geographic center of Texas, an imaginary point whose coordinates divide the state into four equal areas. In straight-line distance it is 437 miles from the state's most westerly point on the Rio Grande River above El Paso, 412 miles from the most northerly point in the northwest corner of the Panhandle near Texline, 401 miles from the most southerly point on the Rio Grande below Brownsville and 341 miles from the most easterly point on the Sabine River near Burkeville. Maximum border-to-border distance is 801 miles from north to south and 773 miles from east to west. Enclosed within the 4,137-mile perimeter of the state are 267,339 square miles or 7.4 per cent of the nation's total area. Fifteen of the 50 states could be readily accomodated within Texas' borders--with more than 1,000 square miles left over. Brewster, in southwest Texas, is the largest of the state's 254 counties with 6,208 square miles, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. Smallest county is Rockwall in northeast Texas with 147 square miles. Texas elevations rise from sea level along the 624-mile coast of the Gulf of Mexico to 8,751 feet atop Guadalupe Peak in the Guadalupe Mountains. Altitude at this point is 1,545 feet. Terrain varies from the subtropic Rio Grande Valley to the trackless Great Plains, from the lush forests of East Texas to the rugged Trans-Pecos region where mountain ranges thrust 90 peaks a mile or more into the sky. But perhaps nowhere are Texas contrasts more pronounced than in average annual rainfall: from more than 56 inches along the Sabine River, nearly as much as Miami's, to less than 8 inches in the extreme West, as little as Phoenix's.