Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: U.S. Counties

  • Split the Name

    United States counties don’t split frequently anymore. There was a time, however, when it happened regularly as populations spread from the east coast into the hinterlands. Typically, a territory or a state would begin with a handful of very large counties. State governments would then carve them into increasingly smaller units as population increased. Eventually…

  • New Counties

    I had so much fun hunting through counties with the recent Google Maps boundary release that I simply kept going. Then I fixated on a set of United States counties somehow considered “New.” Well they started with the prefix New, and referenced something older. Several states included that format so I figured I’d find plenty…

  • Victory: County Lines on Google Maps

    The day has finally arrived. Google just added United States county lines (and more!) to its maps. I’ve been hoping for this development for the last two years. I first pushed readers to express their interest way back in February 2010. I’d mention it periodically (OK, whined), usually within the context of “wouldn’t it be…

  • More Land than People, Part 2

    I discussed the easternmost and southernmost United States counties with fewer than a single resident per square mile in the first installment. That was Kenedy County, Texas. Now, let’s review the map of fractional county population densities once again and take a closer look. There aren’t very many; only 63 out of 3,143 counties or…

  • More Land than People

    It’s a new year on the Twelve Mile Circle. I finished a lot of necessary maintenance behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks when nobody would be reading anything anyway, and I’m ready to start rolling-out new material. What better way to start a new day than by finishing up a bit of…

  • Reflecting on 2011

    I’m progressing better than I expected with my off-season website maintenance plan. It has provided an unexpected opportunity to hammer-out one final post in 2011. I’ve decided to use the downtime to reflect on accomplishments on Twelve Mile Circle during the last year. I posted 156 articles over the year — generally three per week…

  • Full Grassley

    So I realize it’s only Day 1 of my off-season hiatus. Nonetheless, I’ll poke my head up briefly before hibernating again. I want to make sure 12MC readers saw a recent comment posted by John Deeth of Iowa. Comments often fall through the cracks because they don’t appear in newsreaders. And doubly so at this…

  • Not Quite Obscure Enough

    There are places so obscure that they achieve a level of notoriety in geo-oddity circles. Examples would include Loving County, Texas and Kalawao County, Hawaii, which are both revered in the county counting community. No county has fewer residents than Loving with only 82 people recorded in the 2010 Decennial Census. Kalawao comes in a…

  • Google Maps County Lines Imminent?

    At long last, I think we are getting very close to seeing county lines on Google Maps. I noticed them earlier today but they’ve since disappeared. I also observed numerous town boundaries, and in a couple of instances, even neighborhood boundaries. I believe the folks at Google are experimenting with various displays: some of what…

  • Most Landlocked State

    The query simply said, “Most Landlocked State.” It seemed innocent enough as I pondered it. I believed it would have a simple solution. However, the more I considered it the more I figured the answer could vary based upon one’s definition of landlocked. I wish I could ask the anonymous searcher what he (or she)…