Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Roads

  • No Way! Way!

    I noticed high-quality reader input on the recent He Went Thata Way article. I never imagined that there were so many creative Ways to approach the situation and it proved to me that I might be able to mine additional road name gold. I’d have said “No Way” while the 12MC audience responded “Way” and…

  • 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…

  • He Went Thata Way

    One little neighborhood in Las Vegas, Nevada fills me with such joy. It first came to my attention for Supreme Court and then played a starring role as Curdsen Way in Little Miss Muffet. Now it’s inspired me a final time with Thata Way. It’s pure geo-oddity gold. I’ve pretty well exhausted the neighborhood, though.…

  • 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…

  • Bus Traps

    Calgary,(1) Alberta, developed an unusual means to curtail traffic in residential areas. Simply, the city wished to prevent automobiles from taking shortcuts through its neighborhoods. However, they still wished to serve residents with convenient public transportation. So, cars bad. Buses good. Thus arose a devious little road feature called the Bus Trap. Actually, it’s more…

  • 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…

  • Order in the Court

    “Court” is one of many common suffixes used to describe streets or roads. It likely derived from a term that referred to an open-air interior space hemmed-in by the walls of a large building such as a castle, as in a courtyard. Generally, not always, a road appended with court denotes a very short non-connecting…

  • Border Hopping on the Welsh Marches Line

    I found some border weirdness between Pontrilas in Herefordshire, England and Pandy in Monmouthshire, Wales. All would be fine in an automobile. Drive between the towns on A465, cross an unremarkable bridge over the border and continue on one’s way for an eight-minute journey (map). No big deal. Take the same trip by train however…

  • 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…

  • Shortline

    That’s shortline (with a “t”) not shoreline. The term describes very small railroads. I first became aware of shortlines a couple of years ago when we took a brief trip to Vermont during early Autumn. One of our activities included an excursion along the western bank of the Connecticut River. We took that trip on…