Plato is an incorporated village[1] in northwestern Texas County, Missouri, United States. It is located about twenty miles northwest of Houston, Missouri and ten miles south of Fort Leonard Wood on Route 32. Plato had an estimated population of 1,430 in 2000.[2]
The community was founded in 1874 and is named after the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It is the birthplace of screenwriter Josh Senter who is known for his work on Desperate Housewives. As of the 2010 U.S. Census Plato is the Mean center of United States population of the distribution of the U.S. population.[3]
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In March 2011 Plato was declared the 2010 Mean center of United States population based on 2010 Census data.[4][5][6]
The report of Plato as being the mean center was first reported on the Wikipedia mean center page in December 21, 2010 (added via an i.p. address registered to Middlesex, New Jersey) – nearly 3 months before the Census officially declared it. The report got quite wide coverage after being reported in the Houston, Missouri Herald article and a Connecticut Public Radio broadcast. Reports subsequently said that Alex Zakrewsky, a planner from Middlesex County, New Jersey claimed to have been the source for the Wikipedia article. Zakrewsky said he had plugged the 2010 numbers into a spreadsheet he developed using year 2000 data to calculate the center. He said that a colleague posted it to Wikipedia. His calculation placed it to the west of the community on Robidoux Creek, 3.2 miles off the official Census report which placed it on the east side of the community ().[7]
The mean center has been moving southwest through Missouri about 20 to 30 miles per decade since 1980 when it was near DeSoto, Missouri. In 2000 it was near Edgar Springs, Missouri.
Waynesville Regional Airport at Forney Field serves the community with air service. Even though it's on Fort Leonard Wood, it is jointly run by the cities of Waynesville and St. Robert and is available for civilian use by private pilots and scheduled commercial passenger service.
The Fort Leonard Wood area has one daily and three weekly print newspapers, as well as an online internet daily newspaper. South of the post, the Houston Herald [1] covers Texas County issues but doesn't regularly cover Plato village or school issues.
KFBD-FM and its AM sister station, KJPW, are the news radio providers in the Pulaski County area, which includes Fort Leonard Wood as well as northern Texas County. These stations compete with the only other station broadcasting from Pulaski County, KFLW Radio, owned by the Lebanon Daily Record [2] and working locally from the St. Robert offices of the Pulaski County Mirror [3] weekly newspaper.
The Daily Guide, commonly known as the Waynesville Daily Guide [4] but based in St. Robert and serving all of Pulaski County, is owned by Gatehouse Media [5] and is the central printing plant for three other Gatehouse newspapers in nearby counties, the daily Camden Lake Sun Leader [6] and Rolla Daily News [7] as well as the weekly St. James Leader-Journal.[8] The Daily Guide covers school sports and the occasional big story in Plato.
The content of the weekly Fort Leonard Wood Guidon [9] is produced under the auspices of Army Public Affairs at Fort Leonard Wood but printed under contract by the Springfield News-Leader,[10] a Gannett-owned [11] newspaper which produces and sells advertisements in the Fort Leonard Wood Guidon. The military contract to produce the Guidon was held by the Lebanon Daily Record until the end of 2002, and before the Lebanon Daily Record had been held by the Waynesville Daily Guide for many years.
The areas south of Fort Leonard Wood, including the unincorporated Pulaski County communities of Big Piney and Palace, are served by the Plato R-V School District,[12] which is based in the northern Texas County village of Plato but also includes parts of Pulaski, Laclede and Wright counties.
Nearby school districts in Success, Manes and Gasconade, are K-8 districts which don't have a high school. Some students from those districts attend Plato High School after finishing school in their own district.
Fort Leonard Wood is in Pulaski County and a high percentage of military personnel live off post in surrounding communities, especially St. Robert and Waynesville but also the farther-out cities of Richland, Crocker, and Dixon, and the unincorporated communities of Laquey, Swedeborg and Devil's Elbow, all of which have a lower housing cost than nearer housing in St. Robert and Waynesville. Military personnel assigned to training areas on the south end of the post sometimes choose to live in the unincorporated areas of Big Piney and Palace in Pulaski County, or the northern Texas County communities of Plato and Roby.
Seven main school districts are fully or partly within the borders of Pulaski County, not counting two small districts which are mostly within other counties and only have only a few dozen residents within Pulaski County. All seven school districts have a high percentage of Fort Leonard Wood military dependents, and over two-thirds of Waynesville students fall into that category.
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