Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Where Monks Make Beer

    It’s Thanksgiving in the United States today so most of the regular 12MC readers won’t be seeing this article. They can hang out with Big Tom the Turkey. We have more important things to talk about. I did consider taking the day off. Instead I decided to post an article that would likely be more…

  • Countdown

    I’ve held my counting fixation at bay recently although it lurks just below the surface ready to strike. It emerged briefly during the summer as I crossed the borders into several new counties in Utah and it disappeared just as quickly when I focused on other pursuits. It’s been much longer since I paid attention…

  • Subterranean Continental Divide

    I have a fascination with tunnels. So I like to feature them regularly, including articles such as Superlative Tunnels, Tunnel Under the Border, and Tunnels, Bridges, Lifts and Inclines. Also I’ve fixated on boundaries and watersheds such as the Hydrological Apex of North America. It seems odd to me that I hadn’t yet encountered a…

  • No, Not That One

    I was trying to find something on Buffalo, New York. I can’t remember what it was exactly, although that’s not actually important to the discussion. However, a random search led me to another Buffalo, a town with the same name in Wyoming. I considered it rather odd. When one thinks of Buffalo as a city,…

  • Alphabetical Circle

    I had an ulterior motive behind the previous article, X Marks the Spot. Actually, I was researching this article when I discovered a dearth of place names beginning with the letter X. I had been wondering how small a circle I could draw that included place names starting with every letter of the alphabet. X…

  • X Marks the Spot

    It occurs to me how few place names begin with the letter X. I’ll admit that lots of places in China and other portions of the world do. However, those names derive from another language and gain their X during translation. I believe we need to distinguish the set of names converted from foreign logographic…

  • Carbon

    I noticed an interesting theme in a small town in Eastland County, Texas. Carbon, population 224, seems dedicated to all things carbon as befitting its name. Check out its fascinating array of streets featuring carbon in various allotropes, primarily although not exclusively in the form of coal and its derivatives. Carbon-themed streets I found: Coal…

  • Damfino

    I received an interesting tip by email about an old street in San Antonio, Texas identified as “Damfino” (as in “Damn if I know”). Our reader even provided a copy of an 1885 map for the online Library of Congress collection, which I’ve excerpted below. He theorized that the street name may have been a…

  • Studios to Towns

    I began to sense a pattern as I examined a map of Los Angeles, California recently. The movie industry has left its fingerprints upon the names of various places scattered throughout the basin and into the San Fernando Valley. This doesn’t surprise me, I’ve just never noticed it before. Let’s make sure we have the…

  • Loyal Reader Joe

    Those of you expecting a geography topic may be a bit disappointed with this article. Feel free to jump down directly to the “totally unrelated” section or return in a couple of days when I get back to the usual content. Today I diverge completely to another one of my favorite topics, my ongoing battle…

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…