To me Central America is the land of the Jaredites and the Nephites who had traveled north who had to build buildings of stone and cement due to the lack of timber which was their major building material in the land of Zarahemla or Columbia. I find the country of Columbia to be quite right for the size of the great nation of Zarahemla and the Magadalena river to fit as Elder George Reynolds stated in his book to be the river Sidon. Elder Maxwell seems to imply something in his latest conference talk, which stated that Lehi's party landed in Bountiful when they arrived in the Promised land. Bountiful was the land of the Narrow Neck and Hagoth set sail from that land into the western sea and thus the source of many peoples who are of the Polynesians. The land or county of Bountiful ran from sea to sea along the narrow neck which took a Nephite a day and a half to travel.
Many large counties are of that size today.
I work at Dugway Utah which is itself larger than the State of Rhode Island. Bountiful could be on both coasts just as the county of Darien, Panama is on both coast today, and it was. Millions of people lived, fought, and died in each of those lands over the space of years with many, many great lands and cities in each of them. The abridged text of the Book of Mormon may make it seem lesser of time and size than what it was, and what I believe it to be as the result of many, many readings of that book. The size, the time, the cities, and the people are many more than for what Central America cam provide to my mind.