Category: Cities/Towns

  • Noble Layers

    Washington State provided a nice example of presidential layering down to a county, a community and ultimately to a body of water. I couldn’t find any better example. However, I wondered whether I might be able to do something similar on a different tack. Many eastern states reflected another set of leaders, the noble men…

  • Presidential Layers

    Twelve Mile Circle discovered quite the layering of Presidential place names recently, completely by accident. I tried to find a better example during the larger part of an afternoon and never came close. Someone from the audience should feel free to post a comment with better results. Washington State George Washington as the first President…

  • Venice of Whatever

    I kept running into places that compared themselves to Venice as I uncovered canal superlatives. Literally dozens of places described themselves that way. It made things easy for Twelve Mile Circle too. I could select whatever examples I wanted today because I couldn’t possibly cover them all. That seemed like an excellent opportunity to create…

  • Digging for Minerals

    A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar (attributed to Mark Twain). I began some initial planning for a brief county counting trip to West Virginia that I hope to undertake in a couple of months. Examining potential routes, I noted a county called Mineral that I would hit in some…

  • Weather or Not

    Several places named Hurricane — all found far from a coastline — interested me a few weeks ago. From there I wrote a simple article I called Inland Hurricane. I also wondered if the same peculiarity extended to other weather phenomena so I began to search some more. I found mixed results. Even so I…

  • What the Dell?

    My annual long relaxing August weekend in Wisconsin came to an end. I can’t think of any place I’d rather pass the time for a few days than Wisconsin — in the summer. Many people who come to this part of the country end up in Wisconsin Dells. I never thought much about the definition…

  • Weird Place Names Kept Coming

    I found myself in familiar territory once again, with an overflowing backlog of article ideas. That signaled time for another round of house cleaning. In the past I’d featured weird place names that I’d encountered while I searched for other topics. Then I focused on More Weird Place Names and finally Even More Weird Place…

  • Where’s Waldo?

    I selected US Route 23 through Ohio as we drove back from Michigan. This would have been a long detour in normal circumstances. However I wanted to count a few new counties so I cut through a quiet slice of the state instead. So hours passed, boredom hovered nearby and I invented little non sequiturs…

  • Brought Home from the Mexican War

    Texas claimed its independence from Mexico in 1836 as a result of the Texas Revolution. It became a sovereign nation. Even so, Mexico considered Texas part of its rightful territory. Texas faced many difficulties during its early years as a new country as it struggled to keep going and it pushed to join the United…

  • Michigan, Part 4 (Above and Below)

    It wasn’t always easy finding sites that appealed to every member of the family during our Michigan trip. I searched high and low, from way up in the sky to deep undersea, for our little day trips during our week away from home. Local roads took us to three different places in three distinct directions…