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January 23[edit]

What is the point at mainland usa that is most distant from the usa border that is closest to it?[edit]

What is the point at mainland usa that is most distant from the usa border that is closest to it?179.180.22.70 (talk) 23:40, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How would that be different from the Geographic center of the United States? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It might be in Kansas. See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021_September_12 for a similar question. RudolfRed (talk) 03:51, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As in Geographic_center_of_the_United_States#Contiguous_United_States --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That article doesn't really go into detail into the sense in which that point is the "center". There are various different notions of what that might mean — our article triangle center mentions quite a number of them for triangles, the first nontrivial case. They can be rather distant from one another (the circumcenter, for example, need not be inside the triangle at all).

My guess, supported weakly by a cursory glance at one of the references of the article you linked, is that the US National Geodetic Survey chose the Kansas point as being approximately the centroid (the centroid of the curved surface representing the contiguous US would be a point somewhere underground, but you could project it up to the surface).

However, the point the querent is asking about is more closely analogous to the incenter.

As Lambiam said in the prior thread, it would be the center of the largest circle you can draw entirely inside the contiguous US. That might be close to the NGS "center", or it might be some ways off. --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Wichita, Kansas pole of inaccessibility based on visual inspection is 200 miles south of the NGS's geographic center near Lebanon, Kansas. While not walking distance, we at least remain (barely) in the same state. --Lambiam 12:17, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]