Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Even More Weird Placenames

    Twelve Mile Circle has been on a bit of an odd placenames fixation as of late. I found a few more examples. However, they didn’t have enough of a story behind them to justify an entire article on any one of them. So I figured I’d resurrect an earlier series and title this “Even More…

  • Iowa, Iowa, Iowa

    So let’s continuing on the theme of items uncovered while researching Geographic Matryoshka with US States. I’ll also recognize the upcoming Presidential primaries in Iowa in a couple of weeks. Maybe an Iowa topic might be appropriate. I’d uncovered a wonderful triple sequence formed by Iowa Township in Iowa County in the state of Iowa.…

  • Rise and Fall of Idahome

    Interesting things pop-up unexpectedly while I search completely unrelated topics. I searched every instance of a town with a state name, a laborious manual process undertaken for Geographic Matryoshka with US States. Dutifully, I entered each name into the Geographical Names Information System (GNIS) one-by-one and tallied the results. My search produced towns called Idaho…

  • Big Ugly

    I’m working out the details for a short trip in March, a county counting adventure, although I haven’t determined all of the details yet and I’m not quite ready to share the objective. I’ll hit a personal milestone if everything works out as planned so I have plenty of motivation. Part of the drive will…

  • Geographic Matryoshka with US States

    A challenge resulted from the recent Outside of California article, in a comment by loyal reader Rhodent. However, I have to say that I spent way more time than I’d care to admit seeking an optimal solution. Readers who relish a good mental challenge will probably enjoy trying to improve upon my results. Others will…

  • California Tangential

    Article research doesn’t always go as smoothly or as cleanly as one might imagine. I fall headlong into rabbit holes frequently, sometimes finding inspiration for future articles that continue the cycle. Rarely, however, do I find the sheer volume of factual oddities I encountered while investigating places “Outside of California.” I supposed it was enough…

  • Outside of California

    I spotted a town in Maryland called California. I’d known about it for awhile. It always seemed odd to have a town in one state named for another, especially one located an entire continent away. So I figured there must be a connection somewhere in there. Maybe it had roots in the California Gold Rush…

  • The Year in Geo-Adventures

    The final article of 2015 felt like an appropriate time to reflect upon my personal geographic sightseeing adventures during the past year. I accomplished a lot in 2015, more than typical, and I recalled my travels fondly. Plus I figured that readership always dropped way off during the slow week between Christmas and New Years.…

  • Arizona’s Wandering Capital

    The article I discovered was more than a year old, although it was new to me when I spotted it. The title intrigued me, Did You Know: Capital Of Arizona Moved 4 Times Before Settling In Phoenix. No, actually I didn’t know that. I’ve featured similar stories of wandering capitals for other states such as…

  • Alaska’s Southernmost Mainland Airport

    Thank goodness for random search queries that land on Twelve Mile Circle. This time our unknown visitor wanted to find Alaska’s southernmost mainland airport. I don’t know why they wanted to learn that and it didn’t really matter. It became an intellectual exercise, and considerably more complicated than I expected. I’m not completely confident 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…