Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Ocracoke Light Station

    Ocracoke Island, North Carolina (March 2012) The primary reason we went through the trouble of riding the ferry to Ocracoke Island from Hatteras was to see the old lighthouse (map). Construction of this version occurred in 1823 although lighthouses watched over Ocracoke Inlet since 1795. The need had long been established.  English explorers first wrecked…

  • Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse

    Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina (September 2008) The lighthouse on Sullivan’s Island (map) is an oddity. It doesn’t look like any other lighthouse that I’ve ever seen before or since. Sure it’s a towering structure and it throws light far out to sea, but its appearance is downright strange. Most noticeably the tower takes a triangular…

  • Morris Island Lighthouse

    Charleston, South Carolina (September 2008) The Morris Island lighthouse (map) has the classic appearance of what a lighthouse “should” look like. I took this long-range photograph taken from several miles away at Fort Sumter.  It doesn’t do it much justice, but you can just make out the alternating black and white horizontal bands painted onto…

  • Milwaukee Breakwater Light

    Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (2008) A four mile concrete breakwater protects Milwaukee harbor and the mouth of its river from cruel and punishing storms that form on Lake Michigan and slam against the shoreline. Ships accessing the protective waters of the harbor sail through a small aperture.  The Milwaukee Breakwater Light marks the approach (map). The…

  • Marshall Point Lighthouse

    Port Clyde, Maine (August 2009) The Marshall Point Lighthouse appears as the second lighthouse featured in this video I took while traveling around Port Clyde and Muscongus Bay in southeastern Maine (map). This lighthouse can be visited on an easily accessible stretch of the mainland.  It also features a museum open to the public during…

  • Key West Lighthouse

    Key West, Florida (April 2009) A light rose early in the history of Key West — 1826 — just seven years after the territory of Florida became part of the United States. The original brick structure of the lighthouse towered sixty-five feet above the southernmost point of the island, illuminating seaward through the power of…

  • Jones Point Light

    City of Alexandria, Virginia, USA (2000) Only Jones Point light remains as a lighthouse on the Potomac River. It dates back to 1856.  The land on which it rests returned to the Commonwealth of Virginia only ten years earlier. I mention this because I first stumbled across the Jones Point Light while conducting field research…

  • More South Florida Lighthouses

    Broward and Monroe Counties, Florida (April 2009) The lighthouse at Hillsboro Inlet came to the coast rather recently, having been first lit in 1907 (map). This section of coastline sits at the northernmost reach of the Florida Reef and mariners needed sufficient warning when approaching the underwater coral to avoid damaging their vessels. This became…

  • Remote Lighthouses of the Dry Tortugas

    Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida (April 2009) The end of the Florida Keys is not Key West. Not hardly. Islands of coral, sand and mangrove trail out further into the Gulf of Mexico. First come the Marquesas Keys. Further out still, some 70 miles from the civilized shores of Key West come the Dry Tortugas.…

  • Franklin Island Light

    Muscongus Bay, Maine (August 2009) The Franklin Island light (map) is the first lighthouse featured in this video I took while traveling Muscongus Bay in southeastern Maine. There has been a lighthouse on this rock since 1807 — one of the earliest places along the Maine coastline to be lighted — although this current structure…

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…