This center of the world … is in a Wisconsin cornfield?

If there’s a place ripe for making something out of nothing much at all, it might be Poniatowski, Wisconsin.

About 2.5 hours due east of the Twin Cities, the unincorporated town’s lone intersection is flanked by a cemetery, a bar, a junkyard and a welcome sign (“Happiness is Poniatowski”).

And yet, tens of thousands of visitors have pilgrimaged to a field near Poniatowski to a rare geographic site known as the 45x90 spot. Only four such locations exist, and they’re found by dividing a world map into fourths with the equator and prime meridian, and marking the midpoint of each rectangle.

Two of the 45x90 points are in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The third, in a desolate region of China, is nearly as inaccessible. That makes Wisconsin’s spot, 45º N, 90º W, most suited to take its largely useless claim to fame and turn it into a tourist attraction.

Social media has drawn even more people to the humble experience of stepping on a brass disc, staring at the sky and then picking up a commemorative medallion at Wausau’s La Quinta Inn.

“It was our adventure for the day,” a woman explained as she signed the “45x90 Club” book at the hotel desk. She was showing around visitors from Texas, and their next stop was a cheese factory.

The 45x90 spot may not offer the thrill of skydiving or hiking Kilimanjaro. But it has its charms. As well as a bit of controversy, with some scientists disputing its claim to being the center of the northwest hemisphere.

Gesicki helped broker a deal with the farmer who owned the plot to create a tiny, if obscure, county park. The original wooden sign described the spot as a “geological” marker (make that a “geographic” one). And a farmer once accidentally plopped a stinky manure pile close enough to ward visitors off.

But Gesicki was a determined promoter. His bar and general store hosted the roster of 45x90 Club members which, by the 1980s, contained the signatures of visitors from New Zealand and Japan and even, apparently, an official representative of the Queen. Gesicki sold T-shirts and bumper stickers touting the worldwide center, including one that read: “Where in heaven is Poniatowski?”

This part of central Wisconsin does resemble paradise, especially when its fresh-mown hay fields are dotted with big round bales and Holsteins graze beside red barns. If you have the 45x90 spot all to yourself, it’s a peaceful, grounding act to stand on the marker and spin yourself around as insects chirp and corn stalks rustle.

You may feel uncertain about where the world’s headed, or what you’re doing with your life, but there’s a comfort in knowing, at least for this moment, exactly where you are.

Except that, according to some scientists, you’re not. In the early 1990s, a UW-La Crosse physics professor published a paper arguing that because the earth isn’t perfectly round, but ellipsoidal, the point halfway between the equator and north pole needs to account for the bulge. Such calculations put the midpoint 10 miles farther north.

“You’re driving out in the middle of nowhere, and you’re like, ‘Is this even legit?’,” explained Jodi Maguire, VisitWausau’s director of operations. ”And then when you get there, you’re blown away. It’s something unique and educational, but fun.”

Most visitors seem fine with dodging the scientific debate and focusing on the marker’s metaphysical aspects. And soaking in its Midwestern charms, including helping themselves to the bin of homegrown zucchini offered by a neighbor, or chatting with fellow pilgrims as they check the item off their bucket lists.

“I drove past the marker for 45-50 years and never came out here,” said Betty Rasmussen, an area native who now lives in Colorado and was visiting family nearby. “A couple years ago, my nephew came out here with his girlfriend and then I was like, ‘OK, now I gotta go.’ I actually got my 90-year-old mom out here a few months ago and she got her medal.”

The 45x90 spot’s zucchini-growing neighbor, Jerome Seubert, has lived next to the site since shortly after it was discovered. Seubert signed the record book in 1973 and saved it from the dustbin, after Gesicki died and his daughter was selling the old tavern. “I waltzed up and I says, ‘What are you doing with that book?’ ” he recalled. “And she says she’s going to leave it there. And I kind of scolded her. I says, ‘Take it with you.’ ”

After the smartphone debuted, Seubert realized the spot’s original wooden marker, in a parking lot off a county road, wasn’t placed in the exact location. Multiple cars started pulling into his driveway each day, following their GPS-enabled maps. “They’d all come in my yard and say, ‘It says it’s in the field behind your house.’ ”

After the marker moved, Seubert’s porch offered a front-row seat to a tourist-trap reality show. He’s met a motorcycle gang, a satellite spotter, ham-radio operators who spent the night at the spot and a French couple who came for the solar eclipse. TV food personalities Mad Dog and Merrill recently taped a cookout there.

While many rural residents cherish their privacy, Seubert’s charmed by having the attraction almost literally in his backyard. “I don’t really see anything that’s negative about it, other than our dog running up there,” he said. “I guess I can call it entertaining.”

The most exciting visitors, Seubert says, belonged to a Native American drum circle marking the summer solstice with an hours-long ceremony. “But there’s a lot of other people swinging their arms and dancing up there and stuff all the time,” he added.

Some believe the county’s cartographic significance causes it to produce more than 90% of America’s ginseng crop (others attribute it to the climate and mineral-rich, once-glaciated soils). But Seubert, who spent three decades farming ginseng before tariffs collapsed the market, isn’t the woo-woo type.

“I usually ask the people if they can feel the powers come down on them standing in that spot,” he said. “Some people laugh, and some people say, ‘There’s some kind of something.’”