"The Official Center of The World" (Felicity, California)

If you are looking for an offbeat tourist attraction, and are willing to suspend your skepticism for an afternoon, you might consider visiting the town of Felicity. Dubbed as “The Official Center of The World”, Felicity’s is located in the southeast corner of California, a few miles from Mexico, and a few miles from Yuma, Arizona. If you’ve driven on Highway 8 and crossed the California-Arizona state line, you’ve no doubt driven right by Felicity, not even realizing it was there. With a population less than 10, Felicity was founded on May 11, 1986 by Jacques-Andre Istel, and named for his wife. Although not universally recognized as the center of the world, there is enough of a story here that makes this a fun place to stop.

How does one place over another get to be recognized as the Official Center of The World? It is complicated to grasp, but as simple as the story in Istel’s fairytale “COE the Good Dragon at the Center of the World”.  This story actually led to the 1985 law setting the Official Center of the World at a precise point inside the pyramid at Felicity. I would suggest some internet sleuthing if you really want to dig into the details of all this. Suffice to say, according to one website, “there is no scientific or political reason for the designation, but only the effort of Jacques-Andre Istel and his wife Felicia Lee, who founded the town in 1986”.

During a 2-day road trip to Yuma in January 2018, we took an afternoon to visit Felicity, and paid $3 each for our self-guided tour, plus an extra $2 to get certification for having stepped foot on the Center of the World. Felicity, the town, is sparse and barren, like the desert surroundings would suggest, but Felicity the proprietress was anything but. Still giving the Center of the World tour and signing certificates, she was lively and entertaining, never missing a beat, and answering all our questions.

Over a span of 25+ years, the town grew from the official “center” to include a  church which sits on a man-made hillside, a 25-foot staircase that was formerly part of the Eiffel tower, a 15-foot bronze sundial which uses Michelangelo’s Arm of God as the pointer, and a vast Museum of History in Granite, whose purpose is to “engrave in granite highlights of the collective memory of humanity”. This history is still a work in progress, and could conceivably go on forever.

When we began traveling full time 11 years ago, I assumed I would see a lot of the country, but I never actually thought I’d find myself in “The Official Center of The World”!