Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Farm to Market Roads

    I realized I might give away the secret for today’s topic when I released my recent article, Farm to Market. Sure enough, loyal and very observant reader Benjamin Lukoff noticed the foreshadowing and mentioned something familiar in his comment.[1] Another article also figures into the triad although it’s not nearly as intuitive. The strangely popular…

  • Farm to Market

    I have food on my mind. It’s Thanksgiving morning here in the United States and food is a big part of that. I image we’ll have very few U.S. readers today. Most of them will be feasting on turkey, watching the American version of “football,” and getting mentally prepared to hit the shopping malls tomorrow…

  • More Oddities in Washington, DC

    It was great to be offered an opportunity to submit a guest post on Google Sightseeing, following in the footsteps of Kyle Kusch of The Basement Geographer. Google Sightseeing is one of my all-time favorite blogs and I read it often. So it was a pleasure working with its principal authors, Alex and James Turnbull.…

  • Presidential Places

    The mailbag continues to overflow with great topics submitted by readers. It’s wonderful to receive this kind of feedback. I hope to create articles around many of your observations and recommendations as I find the right context and opportunity.[1] Recently I heard from Jason J. who wanted to know if I’d been aware of a…

  • Lancaster Minnesota to Lancashire England

    Slow news day. Let’s see if I can cobble something together. I opened up Google Analytics in map mode and noticed a small, isolated dot. It fell suspiciously near the Minnesota-Manitoba-North Dakota Highpoint. So I drilled down a little further and found a visitor from the tiny town of Lancaster, Minnesota. I’d never heard of…

  • National Mall Flood Plan

    The Washington Post featured an interesting map of the 100-year flood plain in the vicinity of the National Mall in Washington, DC, accompanying the article, Flood plan proposed to protect Washington Mall. It discusses a construction project that’s just about underway. When completed, it will keep a large crescent of land dry if the Potomac…

  • American Meridian Gathering

    I draw your attention to a comment from faithful reader “Craig” on my recent Third Anniversary announcement. I know a lot of you use RSS to skim through the articles so you probably didn’t catch it. He said, “Maybe we should have a Twelve Mile Circle Happy Hour to celebrate” and he even offered a…

  • The Returns Are In. Maybe.

    I’ve been meaning to fill you in on the results of a referendum I mentioned a few weeks ago. Approval would have moved the Benton Co., Washington county seat to from Prosser to Kennewick. The vote happened more than a week ago. Only now do I feel there’s enough certainty to announce a probable result.…

  • Beaver Island in the News

    There’s an interesting human interest story about Beaver Island, Michigan making the rounds via the Associated Press, “Technology a blessing, a curse for remote island.” I mention it both because it’s an interesting narrative and because I’m one of very few people who’ve actually visited Beaver Island. If you care to know more about that…

  • Jackson’s Mill (39°05’49.19″N, 80°28’00.72″W)

    It’s not everyday that an advertisement comes complete with a mysterious Latitude/Longitude coordinate. My local newspaper included a special section on the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War in the United States. This image from West Virginia filled the entire back page. The copy reads, “A nation was nearly torn in half. A state…

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…