Category: Cities/Towns
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Where the Stadium Once Stood
I guess the recent Ghost Signs got me thinking about the way things used to be in an earlier age. My memory circled back to a time when professional baseball didn’t exist in Washington, DC and we used to travel to Baltimore to see the Orioles play. This happened a lot when I was a…
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Marking the Meridian
A random one-time reader landed on Twelve Mile Circle recently. That unknown visitor sought information about the Prime Meridian, and I’ll get to the specific request in a moment. I know I’ve discussed this meridian before. However, in searching my archives and after examining the Complete Index I discovered that I’d never actually marked the…
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Switching Sides
First, a disclaimer. Twelve Mile Circle deals with geo-oddities, not politics. It doesn’t take sides. However, the timing of this post fell closest to the Presidential Inauguration and I thought it might be acceptable to poke a toe just up to the line in a nonpartisan fashion. Reader “Joe” sent me an idea, as he…
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Tenaha, Timpson, Bobo, and Blair
During deep winter I focus a lot of efforts on my genealogy hobby. I think it’s because the holidays offer big blocks of time where I’m stuck indoors. I can concentrate on intricate details as I piece together my family puzzle. Recently a line of research brought my attention to a small town in East…
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That Recurring State Line
A random Twelve Mile Circle reader became an unwitting inspiration for this article simply because of where he or she lived. The little dot within Idaho on my Google Analytics dashboard mentioned State Line. That seemed too good to be true. I’ve done plenty of articles about border towns although I’d never noticed that one…
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Adjacent Tree Towns
While looking at a map recently I noticed two curious towns in Wisconsin. Their names seemed perfectly fine and normal, Poplar and Maple. Their proximity seemed more than a little coincidental. I never found an explanation for collocated tree towns and the pattern didn’t extend to other settlements in Douglas County. Nonetheless, I felt a…
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Ladysmith
A few weeks ago I wrote about Triangle, a name on a road sign that I pondered as I sat stuck in traffic on a drive back from Richmond, Virginia. I also noticed another exit on that fateful trip as I slogged through miles of gridlock. The sign said Ladysmith and my mind began to…
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Merry Christmas
A Merry Christmas to everyone reading Twelve Mile Circle who celebrates the day. A Happy Holiday or well wishes to everyone else as well. Every once in awhile the 12MC publishing schedule falls directly on Christmas. So a Christmas theme felt appropriate even with a diminished audience. Ironically, most people with enough time to read…
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Crystal City
Familiar place names always catch my attention. Often they share a bond with locations near my home in the Washington, DC area. Several years ago I wrote about one such situation in A Tale of Three Ridges. This time Crystal City served as the common denominator. Crystal City, Virginia Virginia’s Crystal City abuts Ronald Reagan…
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Ends of Canada
My Ends of the Earth wandering reminded me of an earlier Google Street View quest. A long time ago, way back in 2010, Twelve Mile Circle included an article I called The Shack at the End of the Road. This marked the northernmost extreme of Street View coverage in Canada at that time. I wondered…