Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: History

  • Llivia & Ile des Faisans

    Today marks a special occasion on Twelve Mile Circle, with its first ever guest blogger, Matthias Gries from France. He has researched a couple of French geo-anomalies that fit in well with the spirit and content of this blog and has written a lively narrative to accompany it. I hope you enjoy his effort —…

  • The Stranded Airport

    Twelve Mile Circle has a fascination with little chunks of land stranded on the “wrong” sides of rivers that occur when waterways change course. Usually this happens when severe flooding digs a new channel through a gradually sloping area of relatively soft soil. I noticed just such a spot in St. Joseph, Missouri awhile ago…

  • Reverberations of a Doomed Expedition

    What possibly could the tattooed mayor of a small rustbelt town, a subway station in an urbanized corridor and the towering historical legacy of George Washington all have in common? If you guessed a failed 1755 British military expedition then you would be correct. I imagine many of you probably guessed wrong. Twelve Mile Circle…

  • Enclaves within Dhekelia

    Cyprus. One island split so many different ways. There’s the de facto partitioning between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. And there’s the United Nations buffer zone created along the ceasefire line. Finally, there’s the British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. This isn’t about any of those divisions. Rather the three, well actually four, tiny…

  • Twelve Mile House

    I get a lot of people looking for “Twelve Mile” places on this site. Naturally we should expect that for a site named Twelve Mile Circle. Sometimes it leads to amazing discovers like the Twelve Mile 500, the preeminent professional lawnmower race anywhere on the planet. Other times it leads to dead ends. So it…

  • Texas: Is Everything Really Bigger?

    I’ve been to Texas many times. I have family there, I have business there, and I’ve driven across its width. I don’t underestimate its gargantuan size. There’s a reason why “Everything is Bigger in Texas” has become such an iconic boast that borders on cliché. If Texas were still a country as it was when…

  • Lost Again

    My initial article on Michigan’s Lost Peninsula was pretty lame. However, it was only the second time I’d ever posted on Twelve Mile Circle in its earliest days. Of course, anyone following this site for awhile knows it’s evolved greatly over time. Do-Over Now, thanks to loyal reader Jim C., I get a rare opportunity…

  • Fort Blunder

    Mistakes happen. Generally though, a nation doesn’t accidentally build a fort on the wrong side of an international border. A neighboring country, even if friendly, might not appreciate that. Throw in a history of mutual mistrust and territorial incursions and things could get much worse. The United States made just such an incursion onto British…

  • The Cult of Elvis

    Oddly I’m not much of a fan of the music of Elvis Presley but I’m a huge fan of the Cult of Elvis. His staying power and continuing impact upon the cultural landscape long after his passage to the great beyond (assuming one believes he’s truly gone) simply cannot be denied. Let’s explore a few…

  • Wall Found at Canada’s Oldest English Settlement

    The National Post reported recently on a “Wall unearthed from Canada’s oldest British settlement.” This was the Cupids Colony in Newfoundland, settled on the Avalon Peninsula along the shores of Conception Bay (map). Thirty nine settlers landed here in 1610 under the direction of John Guy, a Bristol merchant. An overview of the colony appears…