Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Island

  • Odds and Ends 8

    I have a slew of short topics not befitting an entire article on their own. That means it’s time for another installment of Odds and Ends. Non-Native English Readers of 12MC Twelve Mile Circle receives a robust amount of website traffic from readers in nations where English is neither a predominant nor an official language.…

  • Tombolo(s) of Connecticut

    I have an odd affinity for tombolos. I don’t know why. It’s completely irrational. Even one of the earliest Twelve Mile Circle articles focused on the phenomenon. I’ll stick with a definition I drafted back then and quote myself. “A Tombolo is a narrow neck of land that forms between the mainland and an island,…

  • Island Became Mainland

    Twelve Mile Circle is always up for a good challenge. So, loyal reader Greg laid-down the gauntlet yesterday in the friendliest way possible. He commented on Largest Artificial Islands: “A more common phenomenon, surely, must be islands joined to a mainland by landfill. So what about the opposite of this post, the largest former islands?“…

  • Largest Artificial Islands

    My favorite inspiration, the random one-time visitor, struck again. Honestly I don’t know why any of them land on Twelve Mile Circle. This time the person wondered about the world’s largest artificial island. Repeat after me: search for “Wikipedia Largest Artificial Island.” Why come to 12MC when Wikipedia has a wonderful answer already prepared? I…

  • Ferry Hopping

    I’m completely humbled by the response to the recent “How Many Islands in the USA Require Ferry Travel” article. I found 64 islands matching the criteria and stood back smugly until user-after-user uncovered additional instances that I’d overlooked. The number of islands currently stands at 77. It wouldn’t surprise me if it continued to grow.…

  • How Many Islands in the USA Require Ferry Travel?

    Just when I thought I’d examined domestic ferry routes from every possible angle, and new question arose. Longtime 12MC readers already know of my endless fascination with ferries and the saga of my formerly wildly popular ferry pages; still somewhat popular albeit Google’s love affair with them has waned. It’s a complicated relationship driven in…

  • Tales from Dale

    That’s Tales from Dale, which should not be confused with Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues, a brewery that is credited with jump-starting the microbrewery canning revolution. I happened to visit Oskar Blues long before their cans ever reached the East Cost, a bit of zymurgy trivia that makes me happy. I’ve now gone completely…

  • (Mostly) Fictional Ferries

    I receive an inordinate amount of visitor traffic on my Ferry Maps of the World site. Very few of those hits come from 12MC readers. It’s basically a lot of one-and-done landings from people who never return to the website ever again. Google decided it didn’t like me about a year ago or I was…

  • Pennsylvanians are From Mars, Texans are From Venus

    I keep a close eye on the geographic characteristics of Twelve Mile Circle visitors, which seems natural for a geo-oddity website. I also generate article topics from viewer anomalies. For example, I never knew about Mars in Pennsylvania (map) until a Martian visitor, one from a spot north of Pittsburgh as it turned out, jumped…

  • Practically Insignificant

    I was pondering the nature of individual U.S. counties recently as I was going through the somewhat tedious process to create my 100th meridian map. My mind began to wonder. There are urban counties, suburban counties and rural counties. Every once in awhile, however, there will be an individual county that has a size or…