Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: History

  • Western North Carolina, Part 1 (Asheville)

    Subscribers to the 12MC Twitter site likely noticed that I’ve been on vacation recently and probably already understood that it foreshadowed another travelogue. You’ll be happy with the next several articles if you like those. I was in Western North Carolina using Asheville as my base of operations for the week. I wasn’t sure exactly…

  • Hays

    The Twelve Mile Circle “Complete Index Map” has enough entries on it now that my mind wandered to the spots not yet covered. These tended to be remote, empty places bereft of many people or dramatic topography. That would appear to be an accurate description of central Kansas in particular, seemingly flat as a pancake…

  • Flat as a Pancake

    The expression “Flat as a Pancake” obviously means something considered extremely flat. There are several U.S. states, led by Florida, that are indeed even flatter than a pancake. That’s not what this article is about. Rather I found a location that may or may not have been flatter than a pancake. Nonetheless it should be…

  • Virginia Silver and Gold

    Living in the Commonwealth for so many years, I guess it presupposes I’ll notice Virginia mentioned in out-of-context situations. Such was the case with Virginia City, Montana which I saw while researching presidential counties. It served as the seat of local government in Madison County, which derived its name from James Madison, the fourth U.S.…

  • More Fill in Millard

    I noticed an anomaly as I pulled together the spreadsheet of every county named for a U.S. president for the recent Last Presidential Counties article. There was a single Millard County. It represented the only county designated for a president’s first name rather than his surname. Well, as far as I could determine. It got…

  • Lover’s Leap

    A photograph and a quote used on the recent Hot Springs article referenced Lover’s Leap in Hot Springs, North Carolina. Twelve Mile Circle has noticed numerous other Lovers’ Leaps over the years. So then I wondered. In all of those dozens of examples, had there ever been a verifiable case where an actual lover leapt?…

  • Hot Springs Everywhere

    Twelve Mile Circle has featured hot springs before. There was Hot Springs, Virginia in Taking a Bath. There was Hot Springs County, Wyoming and its county seat of Thermopolis in The Largest Smallest US County. Geothermal activities existed in many places and I’d taken notice plenty of times. Nonetheless it mildly surprised me when I…

  • Nearly Nothing Named for Nixon

    I joked as I wrote More Presidential County Sorting that nobody will ever name a county for disgraced former U.S. President Richard Milhous Nixon who resigned in 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. That led me to wonder, well, had anyone ever named anything for him? Maybe I was being overly harsh? Actually…

  • More Presidential County Sorting

    I found one surprising benefit to the tedious research that went into the recent Last Presidential Counties article. Now I could sort through the data differently and come up with several unexpected yet equally fascinating facts. It produced enough material for a second article. But don’t think of these as leftovers! They stand on their…

  • Last Presidential Counties

    Reader Steve Spivey contacted Twelve Mile Circle and floated an idea about U.S. counties named for presidents. He’d traveled through Taylor County in Georgia and recalled a Taylor County in Florida. Could they be related? Well yes, they bore the name of the 12th President of the United States, Zachary Taylor. That led him to…