In the Middle of Things

In the Middle of Things

I simply adore Google Maps and Google Earth.

If you download Google Earth to your computer, and wait for the images, etc. to load, you can have a lot of fun. The downtown St. Louis buildings feature is pretty cool, although it's kind of annoying they depict the Arch as if it was just a monolithic gray box sticking up into the sky. But, hey, for free, how advanced do you want your 3-D renderings?

Among the many layers you can turn on are Crime Stats and Census profiles. While the Crime Stats are pretty much useless, and the Census data is very basic, these data sets are aggregated by county, so they indicate the approximate center point of each county.

So, from either of those points, we can estimate the location of the geographic center of any given county - including the City of St. Louis.

Geographic center point for selected counties

City of St. Louis: 4044 West Pine Blvd., a warehouse built in the 1960s and owned by an affiliated LLC of Steve Trampe's Owen Development, best known as redevelopers of the Continental Life Building. This address is located in the eastern end of the Central West End, just east of Sarah Street, in the light-industrial / commercial area just west of Saint Louis University.

St. Louis County: 681 S. New Ballas Road, approximately, although there's no parcel by that address really. Actually, its on the SE portion of the campus of St. John's Mercy Medical Center, whose address is 615 S. New Ballas Road. The spot is in the wooded area just west of Ballas and east of Cardinal Ritter Drive on the hospital campus, and south of the new parking structure. This location is in Creve Coeur.

St. Charles County: 1858 Williamstown Dr. (approximately) a single-family two-story house built in 2001 in the Chadwyck subdivision. This area is located in the City of O'Fallon, but in the 63376 (St. Peters) ZIP code, a little south of Knaust Road at Mexico Road.

Jefferson County: Near Highland Baptist Church Road at Beckmann Dr, east of MO Route 21 a couple miles north of Hillsboro.

Franklin County: Off Camp Mo Val Road near Camp Mo Val / Camp Tambo Lake, several miles SW of Union near the Bourbeuse River. I've actually been to Camp Tambo (a branch of the United Church of Christ Neighborhood Houses), in 6th grade, for about 3 days I think. This was probably in 1991, and it was the first and pretty much only time I've fished or shot a bow-and-arrow. I wasn't particularly successful at either one. ;-)

Madison County IL: Somewhere just east of Girl Scout Road, in a rural area SE of the junction of Fruit Road and IL Route 157, a few miles NE of Edwardsville. I assume this is Camp Torqua of the Girl Scouts of River Bluffs Council.

St. Clair County IL: Just south of Linwood Ln off IL Routes 13/15, just SE of the city limits of Belleville.

Those last four are all pretty much rural locations, but near their respective county seats. Interesting that two of them are on or near camp grounds.

Source: Google Earth, 10/11/05.