Category: History
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Particularly Possessive
I noticed that Prince George’s County, Queen Anne’s County and St. Mary’s County — all in Maryland — included the genitive apostrophe to form their possessive constructions. I’d always taken it on faith that the United States Board on Geographic Names disallowed apostrophes for that specific purpose. That’s how we ended-up with Harpers Ferry and…
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Can’t Get Enough of Kossuth
The formation and expansion of Kossuth County in the 1850’s discussed in The Odd Case of Iowa’s Largest County pointed to a simple question. So who was Kossuth? That string led me to Lajos Kossuth. I was wholly unfamiliar with the name. Also I wondered why a county deep within the American heartland would honor…
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The Odd Case of Iowa’s Largest County
I had a fascinating Twitter conversation with Steve from Connecticut Museum Quest recently. He has a much more interesting Twitter feed @CTMQ than my mundane @TheReal12MC. Seriously, I don’t have much to say on Twitter other than using it to announce each new article and maybe posting a few beer pictures occasionally. A few people…
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Republic of Indian Stream
The short-lived Republic of Indian Stream owed its existence to frustrations rooted in divergent interpretations of the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain. The treaty included a number of provisions including those designed to establish firm boundaries between Canada and the United States. Ironically, a…
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I Before E Like in Milwaukie
“I Before E Like in Milwaukie.” If that phrase doesn’t grate on one’s nerves or otherwise sound completely wrong, it probably means the reader came from a location outside of the United States. Or came from Oregon. Because Milwaukie does exist in Oregon. I discovered that recently while examining 12MC reader statistics. Someone visited the…
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Streets Named After…
We’ve all seen lists created from Google’s unusual auto-search recommendations. I noticed a few entertaining results as I looked for Streets Named After… well, I forget what I was searching for exactly because I was so enthralled by the false positives. Some were mundane. I expected streets named after celebrities, trees, birds, presidents and such,…
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Seriously Broken
The number of broken place names seemed amazing. I didn’t know what led people to memorialize broken objects, just noted that they they did and it amused me. Broken Lakes, Broken Ridges, Broken Points, Broken Valleys and on and on. The list was so exhaustive that I had a terrible time limiting my selection. So…
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Brewerytown
Twelve Mile Circle reflects my personal interests including those that transcend geo-oddities. Those include my fascination with zymurgy and breweriana. Recent examples included Geo-BREWities and More Geo-BREWities that examined breweries referencing geography within their names. I do try to tie these themes back to geography in some manner since that’s the notional objective of 12MC.…
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Nest of Spies
I’ve mentioned several times before the extremely localized nature of many geo-oddities. Often I’ve used my very own hometown of Arlington County, Virginia as an ongoing proxy. So I created a bicycle ride over the weekend that highlighted a specific theme that I’ve not discussed before. Being located so close to the nation’s capital, Arlington…
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Salty, Saltier, Saltiest, Salton
Loyal reader “Lyn” contacted Twelve Mile Circle a few weeks ago. With it came a stack of digital images from a recent road trip to California’s Salton Sea. This has long been on my list of places I’d love to see some day, and I still hope that will happen. So I certainly enjoyed and…