Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Trailer Park Nation

    Queries from the major search engines continue to land on my website and provide great topics for full-blown articles. An anonymous viewer wondered which state had the highest percentage of residents living in trailer parks. Google thought I had the answer. I didn’t. I’d never even considered it in detail before but I certainly had…

  • A Single Point on the Border

    I encountered a number of interesting situations as I pulled together my recent series of borderlocking articles. One of those revelations pertained to Jeff Davis County(1) in the State of Texas. Examine its layout closely. Clearly it borders on Mexico. However that happens only at a single point along the Rio Grande River at its…

  • Bordersplit

    I have to keep coming up with new words to describe my various geo-oddity fascinations. Today I coined “bordersplit.” It refers to an object cleaved by a boundary line. The way I figure it, if we can use landlocked legitimately then bordersplit should be treated the same way even if it doesn’t exist in a…

  • Deep South Epilogue

    I made it back from my brief journey to the Deep South last night. We covered about 2,500 miles in ten days, seeing the sites and visiting with family. Things went about as well as one could hope. I’ll consider doing this again in the future although it definitely pushed the limit of what I’d…

  • Further Adventures Along the Mississippi Gulf Coast

    We’ve continued our journey along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, relaxing for the most part and visiting with family, but also taking time to explore a little further. Biloxi Lighthouse We stopped at Biloxi this morning. Most people come here for the casinos but that’s not my thing. I’d heard that the Biloxi Lighthouse had reopened less…

  • Lake Pontchartrain Circuit

    We continue to tour along the Gulf. This included a couple of day trips into Louisiana from our base on the Mississippi Coast. I’ve developed from those odysseys what I think is a great itinerary for any beer-loving aficionado of geographic oddities who needs to entertain the kids. I’ll admit that it’s a very small…

  • The Long Drive

    There was a time when I’d drive a thousand miles straight. Back then I’d stop only for gas and food and not give it a second thought. Unfortunately those days are long gone. I can make it only six to nine hours with kids in the car. Even alone I wouldn’t have the stamina to…

  • Goodbye Airlines

    We’re heading out on another epic road trip. This time we plan to cross the southeastern United States. That’s a distance of about a thousand miles (sixteen hundred kilometres), a good bit longer than even our drive to Maine last Summer. Our route takes us on a nice curve from the Mid-Atlantic down to the…

  • Global Warming is Killing Ice Golf

    How about an intentionally inflammatory and completely spurious headline that I’m claiming it to be “true” in the name of the infallible Internet? However, the fact remains that no World Ice Golf Championship has been held since 2006. Additionally, one may never be held again. The sponsors canceled it the last few years because of…

  • Odds and Ends

    I’m facing a situation where I’ve collected a bunch of random thoughts. None of them deserve an entire article individually but maybe they equal one collectively. Feel free to consider this a Tapas Day and select only those tasty little morsels that appeal to you. Maps from the 1870 Census I have an interest in…

Latest Comments

  1. That was its original range before people spread it all around. Now it’s in lots of different places, including Oklahoma.

  2. I think that range needs to be expanded greatly. I’m in the Oklahoma City area and those are fairly prevalent…

  3. The law in the 1800s when most of the countries was being broke down into smaller one stated that you…

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