Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Search for Search and Other Tales

    Longtime readers may recall my fascination with people who come to Twelve Mile Circle, click on the search box on the upper-right corner of the page and then search the word “search.” I don’t pretend to understand the logic although I’ve come to accept it. There is an odd chink in the human psyche that…

  • Pick a Lane. Any Lane

    Roads. I’ve been thinking about roads a lot lately. I’m not sure how that morphed into a search for the road with the most lanes, but that’s where it ended this evening. San Diego, California, USA Lots of other people have wondered the same thing. That allowed me to cherry-pick various lists and collections for…

  • The Other White House

    It was Presidents Day in the United States yesterday, a fact likely known by much of the 12MC audience although perhaps not by many people outside the nation. So I posted an image and a brief message on my Findery page. [UPDATE: Unfortunately the site appears to be defunct now] I wasn’t feeling very wordy,…

  • NOT as the Crow Flies

    All due credit for the article today goes to a reader using the pseudonym “Wangi.” He sent me an email message offline noting an interesting situation, which by implication suggested the basis for another contest. I even stole the title of the current article from him. Thank you, Wangi! There’s nothing unusual going on here,…

  • Checkerboarding

    Checkerboarding has nothing to do with the game of checkers other than bearing a striking resemblance to its playing surface. Nor is it some awful new interrogation technique invented to pry information from suspects under duress. It is this. I discovered the anomaly on Google Maps in Oregon awhile ago while discussing Latitude Longitude Sequences…

  • Truckin’ Through California

    This has absolutely nothing to do with the Grateful Dead although they were indeed from California and noted for Truckin’. It is literally about trucks in California. However, feel free to listen to Truckin’ in the background if that would make you happy. So, it all started out more grandiosely. I recalled a particularly awful…

  • Just Keep Turning

    I think it’s time for another participatory article. The 12MC audience seems to its like little puzzles and challenges. I had to drive to a local shopping center a couple of miles from my home yesterday afternoon to pick up my wife. An Interstate Highway stood between the two locations, acting as a natural barrier,…

  • An Obscure Gettysburg

    This is the story of John Kennedy. No, not that John Kennedy! I’m referring to John Wright Kennedy who I guarantee that you know nothing about, nor should you. It’s about how a formative event in his life resulting in the naming of a town twenty years later. He was a farmer who underwent a…

  • Where is Spider-Man Today?

    The newspaper version of the Amazing Spider-Man today (February 5, 2013) has Peter Parker attached to the back of a moving van, hitching a ride to San Francisco . He’s recently left Las Vegas, and he’s just passed a road sign that reads “San Francisco 237 miles.” Obviously Peter is riding along an Interstate Highway.…

  • 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…

Latest Comments

  2. Hi Mr. Howder — Just going from memory, I recall that your “rule” for counting a nation/state/county is “if I’m…

  5. Does anyone have actual music to the song – Tanaha ,Timpson. Bobo and Blair ?? It was recorded by Tex…