Category: History
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Kentucky Adventure, Part 2 (Blazing a Trail)
Every schoolchild in the United States learned about the Cumberland Gap during history class. The Appalachian Mountains formed a natural barrier to western expansion during the colonial era. Even so, the lower section contained a convenient gap. Native Americans knew about it for centuries before Europeans ever arrived. Dr. Thomas Walker, a Virginia physician and…
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Zea Mays Everta
I guess as the current heat wave bakes me, it forces me think about how nice it would be to sit inside an ice-cold movie theater at the moment. Right now I can’t do that. Still it would be splendid. Also, by association, when I think of a theater I think of popcorn. Aren’t vicarious…
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Cocibolca
English speakers know Lago Cocibolca — or “Sweet Sea” in the language of aboriginal settlers — by a different name: Lake Nicaragua. I’ve long been fascinated by Lake Nicaragua and I would love to go there someday. Thus, recent news of yet another grand plan to construct a canal renewed my interest. If completed it…
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Little Miss Muffet
A map peculiarity reminded me of an old nursery rhyme, probably one of the most famous of them all, and likely familiar to each of us: “Little Miss MuffetSat on a tuffet,Eating her curds and whey;” I’ll get to the specific reason soon enough. Let me ramble and meander for a little while though, as…
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What the Drung?
While we’re speaking of street suffixes — we were just speaking of street suffixes, weren’t we — and after the stravenue encounter, 12MC stumbled upon a suffix of even more weirdness: Drung. Imagine, living not on a street, an avenue, a boulevard, a drive or even a terrace, rather a drung. Drung used in this…
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Twelve Mile Square Reservation
Twelve Mile Circle meets a Twelve Mile Square. I thought I’d found just about every subject with a Twelve Mile theme, every town, every lake, every building, even every bottle. Apparently I missed one, although in my own defense I’ll note that it was a different shape. It formed a square rather than a circle:…
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DC Brewery Trail
EDITOR’S UPDATE: THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2013. THE LOCAL BEER SCENE HAS GROWN AND CHANGED CONSIDERABLY SINCE THAT TIME. How does one justify a series of brewery visits within the subject matter of a geo-oddities blog? Good question. Author’s prerogative? Precedence? Ultimately I considered it a road trip; a very short and very specialized…
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That’s Siouan for Water
I noticed an interesting geographic prefix as I explored Minnedosa, Manitoba in Triple Letter – Canada. The same prefix also applied to one of the individual United States, specifically Minnesota. In both cases the “Minne” portion derived from a Siouan word for water. Minnedosa was Flowing Water and Minnesota was Cloudy Water. I wondered if…
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Arlington County Will Grow
I stumbled across an article in the Washington Business Journal a few days ago. They called it, Over the river: Reagan National runway to be shifted into the Potomac. This probably wouldn’t mean much to most people. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority will adjust one of DCA’s notoriously short runways ever so slightly. That’s a…
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Triple Letter – Canada
Recently I posted an article that described all of the places in the United States where the county seat, the county, and the state all began with the same letter. I considered seven instances where each of the three levels of government had completely different names to be particularly “outstanding.” For example, one was Gibson,…