I have indeed gone to many wonderful places. Now I am sitting on the 100th meridian up here in North Dakota. I am not sitting on anything real, like a chair or a porch swing: a meridian is simply one of many imaginary lines that divide the globe into equal sections. I am in the yellow state with the red line crossing through, if your geography is fading.
Technically, the 100th meridian is about 33.9 miles to the west of me, in a town called Linton. However, from an airplane that distance would be reduced to nothing. I consider myself on the 100th meridian or close enough!
Here are all the counties that have a piece of the meridian passing through:
North Dakota
- Rolette
- Pierce
- Wells
- Kidde
- Emmons
South Dakota
- Campbell
- Walworth
- Potter
- Sully
- Hughes
- Stanley
- Lyman
- Tripp
Nebraska
- Keya Paha
- Brown
- Blaine
- Dawson
- Frontier
- Gosper
- Furnas
Kansas
- Norton
- Graham
- Trego
- Ness
- Hodgeman
- Ford
- Clark
Oklahoma
- Harper
Texas/Oklahoma border
- Ellis, OK
- Lipscomb, TX
- Hemphill, TX
- Roger Mills, OK
- Wheeler, TX
- Beckham, OK
- Collingsworth, TX
- Harmon, OK
- Childress, TX
Texas
- Cottle
- Foard
- King
- Stonewall
- Jones
- Taylor
- Runnels
- Concho
- Menard
- Kimble
- Edwards
- Real
- Uvalde
- Zavala
- Dimmit
- Webb
Any of them sound familiar? Perhaps you too can sit on the 100th meridian. Some towns are so proud that they remind themselves every day.
Cozad, NE
So why do I mention all this trivia? In some circles, the 100th meridian is famous. The line goes through the geographic center of the US, but more than that, the line marks the end of the eastern ecozone and the beginning of the western ecozone. Scientists, agriculturalists, and geographers agree on this point because along that line (roughly), rainfall amounts change, which in turn changes other things, such as soil composition.
The meridian roughly marks the boundary of the semi-arid climate to the west and the humid continental climates to the east. The type of agriculture west of the meridian typically relies heavily on irrigation. White settlement, spreading westward after the American Civil War, settled the area around this meridian during the 1870s.
By the way, Wallace Stegner wrote a biography of John Wesley Powell, called Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. Powell was a great adventurer of the west, and Stegner’s book is a must for anyone who wants to travel with Powell down the Green then Colorado Rivers, through the Grand Canyon. This is a big book, yet I could not stop reading about Powell’s discoveries.
Back to sitting on the 100th meridian. This means that I do not live in the eastern or the western US. This is potentially quite confusing. Were Dr. Suess alive today, I think he could sum up my predicament nicely. In Seuss’s book “Oh the Places You will Go”, he says the following:
and
and
These quotes do not precisely explain my situation, except to say that I don’t know exactly where I am -east or west-so how can I know where I will go? East to west, west to east? I grew up to the east of the 100th meridian, but have spent most of my adult life to the west. And the place where I now sit does not look like either side of the line, as I knew it before moving here.
Come to think of it, from my perch on the 100th meridian, east and west are meaningless. North Dakota is NORTH. North Dakota is in the northern tier of states. Aside from the fact that the state is named NORTH Dakota, northern is is the only way to describe the feel here. Arizona, where I first attended school, felt far to the south. North Dakota feels so north. Consider the long days right now (16 hours of sunlight by June 21) and the short, frigid days of winter. Snow remains on the ground all winter, once it falls. Many people who grew up here report sightings of the Northern Lights. Furthermore, this is a major northern summer breeding area for birds, who fly back south in the fall. They surely know the north from the south! Do they fly east or west, crossing meridian lines? No! They travel north and south. And, camping/gardening season does not start until around Memorial Day. Even in Wyoming, which is no slouch when it comes to winter, I was nibbling baby lettuce and young kale by Memorial Day.
So, living on the 100th meridian is a romantic notion – what defines this area for me is that it also sits near 50 degrees north (latitude lines). I am closer to Alaska than Arizona! The weather patterns that most affect us come from up there, too.
Since I cannot define myself anymore as a westerner, easterner, or mid-westerner, I will be content as a northerner- a buff, tough, hardy settler on the northern plains, or something like that. Now I am off to turn up the heater, tonight temperatures will sink to freezing yet again.
