If you want to find Kristine Crispel's horse farm outside Coffeyville, Kansas, the directions are easy:
Step 1: Go to Google Maps.
Step 2: Zoom in.
Crispel's 53-acre Shamrock "K" Horse Center sits just north of the Coffeyville Country Club in an out-of-the-way spot that has the distinction of being the center of the world -- according to Google.
"When we moved here, we were told we were halfway from anywhere in the United States," Crispel said. "It is logistically very convenient to Joplin, Wichita and Tulsa."
The launch of Google Maps in February 2005, has helped put Coffeyville on the map. "We get e-mails from all over the world," said City Clerk Cindy Price. "People want to see how far they can zoom."
From its default setting, the site zooms in from a map of the United States down to 37.0625 latitude, -95.677068 longitude, a spot that's a muddy brown pixel on Google and a "fallow, weed-filled field" on foot, said Maggie Dew, a geocaching aficionado who trekked to the location earlier this month with her Garmin eTrex GPS receiver.
Dew, an archaeologist working on a project near Coffeyville, parked in the driveway of the closest home and spoke to the resident. "I asked if he knew his property was at the center of the Google map," she said. "He looked at me a little like he thought I might be crazy."
The location has sparked a lot of speculation from a group that positions Google closer to the center of its members' hearts -- bloggers.
"Kansas is home to both the geodetic center of North America and the geographic center of the lower 48 states," wrote blogger Milan de Vries. "Neither of these is in Coffeyville, so what exactly Google is using is unclear, but still, Kansas is Middle America. For those keeping score, the center of the universe is still Jerusalem."
Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez couldn't find an explanation for the choice of Coffeyville, a city of 11,000 on the Oklahoma border that's best known for wiping the Dalton Gang off the map in 1892.
One possibility Google could rule out: The choice of Coffeyville wasn't made for the city's largest employer, Amazon.com, which has a 1-million-square-foot fulfillment center in the city with 500 full-time workers and 1,000 seasonal Christmas elves.
In a few instances, someone at Google appears to have exercised editorial discretion in the preparation of its maps.
Google Earth, another cartographic service offered by the company, centers its globe on Lawrence, Kansas, in company exec Brian McClendon's nod to his former hometown and alma mater, the University of Kansas.
"When you look at (San Francisco's) Candlestick Park the imagery is during game day," said Rich Gibson, co-author of the book Google Maps Hacks. "You can basically see the team on the field. Go over to Oakland and the stadium's a ghost town."
Some edits were made for security reasons: Vice President Dick Cheney's residence at 1 Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C., is an undisclosed location, thanks to a blur, and details on rooftops around the White House have been obscured.
Coffeyville occupies a special place in any software that is built atop the Google Maps API, an interface for developing web services using Google's mapping data. If Google can't find a location, users are directed to its favorite spot.
"When it gets confused, it defaults to where the center of the map is," Gibson said.
Because of this glitch, the travel portal eachTown.com placed the cities of Big Reedy, Kentucky, and McGaw Park, Illinois, on Crispel's doorstep. An application that helps film buffs find the nearest theater recommended that moviegoers in Austin, Texas, drive several hundred miles north to see Revenge of the Sith.
"I imagine a mob of thousands ... dressed in their finest Darth Vader attire are searching for the Lakeline Mall Regal Cinema in Coffeyville," a reader wrote to the blog Lifehacker. "How will the town of Coffeyville react to that invasion? This is a recipe for disaster."
Crispel has owned her "dream farm" for eight years, where she has shown and bred Arabian horses. Her website promotes stable and breeding businesses, drawing customers from around the United States to the center of the Google Maps universe.
Coffeyville is a calm, Midwestern town that's "small enough," she said. "Nobody's in a hurry."
Though Crispel relies on Google to direct customers to her website, she was unaware of how centrally located the farm has been for the past year on Google Maps.
In fact, she said she's never even used the service.
"If we're trying to find something, we use Yahoo or MapQuest," she said.
