I was looking at a map of Atlanta which, as a cacher, is my wont, when I wondered what the rough "center" of 285 would be if I averaged coordinates along its entire length.

So I did it.

I went to the GPS Visualizer site, plotted out a track along the entire circle of 285 and averaged all the north and west coordinates.  Now, I realize that there is a lot of gray area due to a number of factors:

• The width of the highway right-of-way and where I placed each point within that band;
• The quantity and spacing of points I used to draw the track (in my case, over 1000);
• The built-in imprecision of Google Maps itself. Nobody should rely solely on map imagery for locating coordinates...and nobody should rely on coordinates taken from map imagery.

Honestly, about the only thing I totally trust in all of this is the ability of Microsoft Excel to calculate the average of those 1045 - evenly spaced - coordinate points.

To my surprise, the centroid appears to be almost smack dab in the middle of town, in one of the most active areas of Atlanta!  In reality, the actual "centroid" would probably be more of an irregular elliptical shape instead of a single point because of the factors I list above, but I have to give precise coordinates...so here you go.  Find this cache and you've found the cache at the very centroid of I-285.

Congratulations on this monumental achievement...and in case you're wondering, the precise number I calculated was 33.76830841, -84.38757584. I also did a second and third set, each one putting me blocks away from the first...a variation of up to 1500 feet. Since the three sets of calculated coordinates appear to be all over the place, I found a spot roughly at the centroid of those points.

Oh...and if you feel like calculating your own centroid, the tool I used is on the 'Related Web Page' link at the top of the page. Feel free to post your own results if you're masochistic enough to do such a thing or just want to tell me how far off my own calculations are.