Marker in tiny Missouri hamlet denotes US population center

HARTVILLE, Mo. (AP) — It’s not every day that a small hamlet in the Missouri Ozarks is in the middle of everything. But that was the case for tiny Wright County, Missouri, on Wednesday as dignitaries from the nation’s capital unveiled a marker designating a spot in the county as the center of population in the U.S. Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau debuted the red granite marker in Hartville, Missouri. Hartville is the county seat and it’s located 14.6 miles from the actual spot. The nation’s population center is calculated every 10 years after the once-a-decade census.