Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Terrain

  • Ampersand

    One of the sources I consulted for Follow the Letter referenced a town with an alphabetical street grid with one extra street. They named the street Ampersand instead of beginning a new sequence, although technically Ampersand did begin with an A as long as it wasn’t explicitly rendered as “&” on the street sign. I’ll…

  • Chicago-New York Electric Air Line

    I have a fairly neutral opinion about trains and railroads, and readers probably wouldn’t confuse me with a railfan. I never really thought about them much, honestly. Sure, I’ve taken rides on scenic railroads once or twice and related geo-oddities make it onto 12MC occasionally. However, that’s generally coincidental. I’m starting to grow more fond…

  • Highpoint, Not Summit

    I was reminded recently, as I updated an old page, that not every U.S. state highpoint can be found on the summit of its parent landform. Boundaries don’t always follow geographic contours like rivers or ridges. Oftentimes segments are composed of straight lines determined by agreement or treaty or negotiation regardless of the underlying terrain.…

  • Webby Finds

    I can’t seem to make a dent in my list of potential Twelve Mile Circle articles. I keep writing steadily and in the process I run into several more morsels that go onto a never-ending pile. It appears I’ve created a perpetual motion machine. I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a very…

  • Plank Roads

    I used to drive between Washington, DC and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, nearly every weekend for about eighteen months a number of years ago. I became very familiar with the route and every landmark placed upon it as one might imagine. One of those included an exit for Boydton Plank Road along Interstate 85 near…

  • Loess

    What do Council Bluffs, Iowa, the Battle of Vicksburg and the Yellow River all have in common? Loess. Loess comes from the German löß, and has a common root with the English word, loose. This geological term describes a light silty dust blown by the wind that accumulates into thick layers and hills. These deposits,…

  • 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,…

  • Oxbows in Africa

    I’m sensitive to the frequency of 12MC article pushpins that increase exponentially as one gets closer to my approximate home. I write about what I know best, and geographic distance permeates that equation. That leaves many areas of the earth underserved and creates a vicious circle. Residents of those places don’t hit the Twelve Mile…

  • Kentucky Adventure, Part 6 (And the Rest)

    All good things come to an end and before long our Kentucky adventure approached its natural conclusion. It was time to return home. I still had some parting opportunities as I left the state and then again as we steered through West Virginia towards the Mid Atlantic. East Wasn’t East Long ago in the early…

  • Kentucky Adventure, Part 4 (Power of Water)

    I noticed a common theme intertwined with water as we explored the southern tier of Kentucky, from Lake Cumberland to Mammoth Cave: water as an historical and modern source of power; water as a recreational activity; water as an obstacle and water as a force of nature. The Cumberland River and the Green River, both…