If you happen to be in Roseville, at the intersection of Roselawn and Cleveland avenues, walk north along the east side of Cleveland, crossing a little cul de sac named Loren Road, and continue past the yellow fire hydrant until you come to a boulder set flush with the sloping ground. The plaque on the boulder will inform you that you are standing on the 45th parallel — the halfway point between the equator and the north pole.

If you were to follow that line to the west, you would soon find yourself traveling along Minneapolis's Broadway Street Northeast, past the UPS facility and the former Grain Belt Brewery and the Pierre Bottineau Library, then crossing the Mississippi River into North Minneapolis.

There the line of latitude follows the southern edge of West Broadway Avenue, aka Hennepin County Road 81. As West Broadway, it passes a few scant remnants of the old Jewish North Side, with its brick buildings and once-thriving streetcar hubs.

After crossing Girard, Broadway parts ways with the 45th parallel and heads northwest and eventually out of town, becoming Territorial Road, established by the Territorial Legislature in 1855. It travels 20 miles to the Township of Hassan in the Northwest corner of Hennepin County, which was settled in 1854, thus linking the only remaining township in the county to the city of Minneapolis.

From Girard, latitude 45 is picked up by Golden Valley Road, about a half block south of Broadway, which carries it through Wirth Park, where a second marker on a boulder, in the middle of a little triangle of land just south of where Golden Valley Road intersects Theodore Wirth Parkway, marks another point on the trajectory: “This boulder is located on the forty-fifth parallel of latitude which is midway between the Equator and the North Pole. Elevation 888 feet above mean sea level.”

The invisible line joining those two boulders links us to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, then launches itself across the Pacific Ocean at Lincoln City, Oregon. It meets land again in Japan, passing through Sarobetsu National Park, then through China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and across the Black Sea into Romania. From there it crosses the Piedmont region of northern Italy and France’s Rhone Valley, then through Bordeaux, France, before it threads its way across the ocean once again, to make landfall at Tewiacke, Nova Scotia.

After making its way through Maine, it skims along the northern edges of the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, then through the province of Ontario, and traverses Lake Huron to enter the state of Michigan. Then across Lake Michigan and into Door County, Wisconsin, and finally back into Minnesota and the cities of Roseville and Minneapolis. And all of those places around the world enjoy the same number of hours of daylight as we do.

To take an imaginary trip along the 45th parallel, pausing at all the markers of that geographic icon, visit here. To plan a 45th parallel wine tasting, or maybe several tastings, try this page.

The 45th parallel marker in Wirth Park