Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: U.S. Counties

  • The Misplaced County Seat

    We’ve had lots of talk recently about inconveniently located state capitals and misaligned county seats. We’ve mined that thread for about all it’s worth so this is the last one for awhile, I promise. However, while I was conducting that research I came across an instance where the county seat is completely misplaced, and yet…

  • Will the County Seat Move?

    In the United States counties are the primary administrative subdivisions of states and the county seats are towns that serve as the local center of government. There are plenty of notable variations and deviations from that model but as a general rule, states have counties with formally designated county seats. Government officials usually established county…

  • Texas Borderlocking

    It’s been a long time since I’ve touched upon the borderlocking phenomenon. Many new readers have entered into the Twelve Mile Circle in subsequent months. Of course they have no idea what I’m talking about. Others may have a vague recollection but might need to refresh their memories. Go ahead and open Layers of Borderlocking…

  • EXTREME County Counting

    Many of us are County Counters here on Twelve Mile Circle. I’m a practitioner myself and I’ve been known to go a couple hours out of my way to pick up a few new ones. However, what would you say about a plan to visit every single county in New England within a 24-hour period?…

  • The Swap

    An obscure page on the U.S. Census Bureau website, Substantial Changes to Counties and County Equivalent Entities: 1970-Present may not hold much interest to the general public. Even so it’s a site that I’ve bookmarked and visit once in awhile. It’s an ongoing catalog of boundary changes that involve at least 200 people or areas…

  • A Geo-Oddity Holiday Celebration

    I faced a dilemma on the 4th of July holiday this year. I’d celebrated in style last year with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the spectacular Washington, DC show from a rooftop balcony. How could I top that for Independence Day 2010? Well, the answer is I couldn’t. The only way I could improve upon…

  • Arapahoe Exclaves in Denver

    I’ve kept my eye on a certain set of geo-oddities for a long time. Arapahoe County possessed multiple exclaves fully enclosed within the boundaries of Denver City/County, Colorado. Denver had to find a way to grow as people moved into the area. So they found an easy solution. They simply annexed land from their neighboring…

  • Denver’s Freaky Appendage

    Take a look at the shape of Denver, Colorado. You’ll notice an unusual appendage branching out from its northeast corner. Denver represents one of those infrequent hybrid situations where a city and a county combine to form a single entity within a common border. As a consequence, sometimes Denver acts like a city and sometimes…

  • Mob Rule

    One dictionary defines mob rule as a government by violent gangs, or by the masses. Another provides a wonderful synonym, Ochlocracy, a middle French word derived from the ancient Greek; which various other sources define as power from the multitude or crowd. Either way it seems a strangely deviant name for a website devoted to…

  • Adjacent Counties, Same Name, Different States

    We’ve had a lively interactive discussion within the comments section of the recent article, “For Aficionados of Counties.” This doesn’t surprise me. Many of our regular readers are indeed aficionados of counties. In fact I seem to have cornered a great deal of the market on geo-oddities at this tertiary level of US government, not…