More "Centerville" than "Centerville"

I made a tourist stop in Marion on Monday.

Not that there’s much to see in Marion – a tiny little bump in the road near I-16 along the Jeffersonville-Bullard Road.

It's about 17.5 miles southeast of Macon. And it's more "Centerville" than nearby Centerville.

There in the parking lot of the Old Marion Baptist Church is a marker designating the geographic center of the state of Georgia.

Several years ago, some graduate students from the North Avenue Trade School got out their calculators and compasses. They used geometic calculations to determine the exact center of of the largest state east of the Mississippi River is located at the confluence of two creeks in Twiggs County.

To be precise, it’s at 32 degrees latitude, 38.46 minutes and 83 degrees longitude, 25.54 minutes.

Hope that helps.

There is no longer a town of Marion. It died off following the Civil War, after residents opposed construction of a railroad.

When the county seat moved up the road to Jeffersonville, it was the beginning of the end for Marion. A century later, a swath of concrete called Interstate 16 claimed some of the remains of the once-thriving community in its indirect path along Exit 7.

The town was named after Francis "Swamp Fox" Marion, a hero of the Revolutionary War. And in 1948, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey officially established a swampy clump of land nearby as the "exact" center of Georgia.

At the request of former state Rep. Kenneth Birdsong, the Department of Natural Resources placed a marker on Bullard Road, indicating Georgia's bull's-eye was about 1.1 miles to the southeast -- at the junction of Turvin and Savage Creeks.

It’s not exactly a tourist stop, but I suggest you go check it out sometime. At least you can say you’ve been there.