Category: Government
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A Secret Revealed
Don’t you hate misleading headlines? I’m not really revealing a secret because it hides in plain sight. The information was publicly available as long as one knew where to search for it. I’m talking about a so-called “secret” Interstate highway route recently outed by the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. Unsigned Interstates There…
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Warning at the Border
I’m still catching-up from my brief holiday hiatus from Twelve Mile Circle responsibilities. It serves me right for thinking I could keep a low profile. So much geo-weirdness happens in the world at any given time. I imagine many of you saw the mainstream press coverage of a few legislators in New Hampshire proposing warning…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Disestablished National Parks
Last summer 12MC reader “Scott” provided me with a boatload of National Park trivia. I continue to mine that for article suggestions. With that, I’m going pursue an angle that might be little known, or maybe just to me. One often thinks of everything associated with National Parks as perpetual. After all, their goals include…
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Rural Free Delivery
Rural Free Delivery, often distilled down to its recognizable initials RFD, is a cornerstone principal of postal service in the United States. It is an element we take for granted. Mail will be delivered to every corner of the nation at a reasonable price that does not penalize citizens for living in rural areas. However…
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Winneconne Rebellion
Winneconne seems so much like many typical villages I’ve experienced during my travels through the Upper Midwest of the United States, at least on the surface. Farming and fishing commingle along beautiful lakes carved into the landscape by glaciation during the last Ice Age. It’s what makes Wisconsin one of my favorite places on earth…
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Strip Annexation in Arizona
Loyal reader Scott sent me a message recently related to towns studded with enclaves outside of their jurisdiction. That specific topic sometimes generates discussion on Twelve Mile Circle (e.g., Mmm… Doughnut and the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole). So he wished to bring an even more interesting situation to my attention. He referenced the concept of Strip…