Rugby, NDJul 11, 2009
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monument for the geologic center of North America
these used to mimic the Northern Lights when lit at night, but...
Layout of the Prairie Village Museum which has too much stuff!
While traveling East on Route 2 through North Dakota, I came to Rugby and stopped to see its claim to fame as the geographic center of North America. The placard and brochure say we're standing at the center of it all, but a local resident says the actual center is 15 miles south in a cow field, so there you go - false advertising. At least the compass showing the center of the USA states the truth.
Close to the stone monument is a sculpture of columns of colored metal. Upon inspecting that, it is a tribute by some artist to the Northern Lights. It used to portray a likeness to those lights, but it doesn't anymore because Rugby grew and there are now street lights on Route 2 that void the effect of lighting these metal columns! bummer.
Next to that is where I could pull in with my RV and found I could park there for free and stay a few nights if I wanted to IF I bought admission to the Prairie Village Museum. What the heck - I have time to walk through. This museum has everything you could imagine a village having around the turn of the 20th century and then some. including kitchen sinks, stoves, bath houses, a saloon, a barbershop, offices for doctors and dentists and lawyers and phone operators and jail keepers and blacksmiths and school teachers and even a mortician! Of course there was a caboose, farm equipment and cars galore. A guy from this area went to Alaska, so there are Eskimo and Alaskan artifacts here too! Another guy went to school here and was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest man in America at 8'7". A picture of the advertisement for this place shows it better than I can.
