The fair place to meet is Kansas City, MO — the city closest to the midpoint of Hartford and San Diego. From the farther side that’s about 27 hr 59 min of driving.
Recommended midpoint
Kansas City, MO
From Hartford
24 hr 24 min
1,163 mi to Kansas City
From San Diego
27 hr 59 min
1,334 mi to Kansas City
Hartford has the shorter trip; the split is off by about 3 hr 35 min. The alternatives below can even it out. Hartford and San Diego are about 2,496 miles apart.
Hartford and San Diego are about 2,496 miles apart by road. Split the difference and you arrive near Kansas City, the city closest to the halfway point between them. That puts roughly 24 hr 24 min of driving on the Hartford side and 27 hr 59 min on the San Diego side — the fairest single meeting point among the cities near the middle.
Over this distance most people will fly rather than drive the whole way. Kansas City still makes a fair, central place for Hartford and San Diego to converge, splitting the travel instead of asking one side to cross the country.
If Kansas City doesn't have what you're after, Oklahoma City and Omaha are also close to the midpoint and worth a look — each keeps the drive reasonably balanced between Hartford and San Diego.
Kansas City, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by both population and area. It is located on the Missouri River at its confluence with the Kansas River, within Jackson, Clay, Platte and Cass counties. Read more →
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 at the 2020 census and was estimated at 124,006 in 2025. Read more →
San Diego is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. It is the eighth-most populous city in the U.S. Read more →
City descriptions adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA); photos via Wikimedia Commons, credited above.
Estimates use straight-line distance and typical road speeds; real drive times vary with route and traffic.