Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Four Corners, Part 2 (Hikes)

    The vast empty spaces of the Southwest offered great scenery with long distances between stops. That didn’t bother me. I liked driving and I enjoyed the view. We found plenty to do along the way too, mostly outdoors. Every place worth a detour also included a signature hike of some sort. Even the most crowded…

  • Four Corners, Part 1 (Orientation)

    Our family visits a different part of the United States every summer. This year we decided to travel through northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. We made it as far west as the Four Corners monument although we we spent only a few moments in Utah and Arizona. We toured through parts of Utah back…

  • Tendril of Fairmont

    Last October I took a trip through various parts of northern West Virginia to count some counties. This included a stopover in Morgantown, home of the state’s flagship West Virginia University. I bypassed this area a number of times previously so I enjoyed being able to stop there for once. Research at the time brought…

  • It’s a Mystery to Me

    I felt like a good mystery. People named a number of geographic features Mystery something-or-another. However, most of them seemed to be Mystery Lake for some mysterious reason. Generally I couldn’t find much because they were often small, existed in abundance and fell across many different English speaking countries. I discarded them. Instead I found…

  • The Border Peaks

    It’s not unusual to see an international border extend across or along a mountain range. Even Mt. Everest sits on the border between Nepal and China. Also, a border will need to be adjusted sometimes when the underlying physical characteristics of a mountain changes too. That issue confronted Italy and Switzerland several years ago as…

  • Duck

    Several years ago, and I don’t recall exactly when, I wrote an entire Twelve Mile Circle article without using a single Google tool. I found it incredibly frustrating, nearly impossible. The article got buried somewhere in the archive and I don’t remember the title. Just trust me. I didn’t enjoy it. Apparently I didn’t learn…

  • Cigarette Hill

    I focused attention on unusual street names awhile ago. That theme played itself out over time so I left it behind for the most part. However, every once in awhile, I come across something interesting enough to mention on Twelve Mile Circle. This time it appeared in Texas. What was it about Texas? Once I…

  • King Boring and the Detroit Gems

    The story of King Boring kept playing in my head. I imagined that longtime Twelve Mile Circle readers probably already knew I’d have to revisit it in more detail. Plenty of extra information revealed itself on the Intertubes and in genealogy resources. To quickly recap, King Boring and his partner once owned the Detroit Gems,…

  • Simply Boring

    Speaking of boring places, the phenomenon didn’t confine itself exclusively to Oregon. Sure, the largest Boring town existed just outside of Portland. However, because Boring was also a surname, it spread to other locations as one might expect. Residents tended to have the same sense of humor about living in Boring places everywhere. The same…

  • Boring, Dull and Bland

    Boring, Dull and Bland hopefully doesn’t describe Twelve Mile Circle or my social life although maybe observers would disagree. It referenced a unique relationship between three very special communities. One day a Scottish bicyclist took a scenic ride through Clackamas County, Oregon, just outside of Portland. Then she passed through the unincorporated community of Boring.…

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…