The center of North America – and of everything the Stadums called home.
Rugby, North Dakota calls itself the geographic center of North America, a claim marked by a stone monument just off US-2. For the Stadum family, it was something simpler and more durable: home.
Palmer and Signe Stadum raised their family here – Rod, Beverly, and Peggy grew up on the North Dakota plains. Palmer's work with Baker Electric carried electricity across Benson County, and Rugby's Pioneer Village museum would later recognize that work formally at the REA's 40th anniversary in 1975.
Rugby sits in Pierce County, just south of the Benson County line where much of Palmer's electrical installation work took place. The town gave the Stadum family its community, its neighbors, its school, and its sense of place in a landscape defined by sky, grain, and long winter silences.
