Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Separate but Tallest

    Sometime examining something from a different angle provides interesting results. Other times it provides only the previous results, just with a different angle. Today it was the latter albeit with one unrelated twist at the end. I thought about a 12MC article from 2010, New Highpoint for the Netherlands. It pointed out the interesting situation…

  • Finding the Original Purpose

    I’m always on the lookout for unusual trivia. For example, something stuck in my mind a couple of years ago when I learned about the Augusta Canal. Logically it’s located in Augusta, Georgia, but that’s not what mattered. There was another claim that took a variety of forms. So I put that one on the…

  • Longest Routes for Smaller Areas

    The Twelve Mile Circle audience loves little puzzles. Knowing that, I thought I might try to fold a couple of related ideas that have fascinated lately into a single entry. First Dimension I looked back to one of the more popular 12MC concepts, the Longest Google Maps Routes. I published that about eighteen months ago…

  • The Resurrectionists

    There’s a reason why Twelve Mile Circle appears on the howderfamily.com domain. It began as a genealogy and family history site. 12MC started as a minor side project, an afterthought. I never abandoned the original purpose tough, even when my geo-oddities coverage grew exponentially more popular. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a…

  • British Roads Oddities

    I spent quite a long time, probably a solid couple of hours going through the British Roads FAQ on Roads.org.uk. I found map locations for those that fascinated me the most. It presented an extensive FAQ and I’ve shared a small sample of questions and explanations below. Links and all due credit should go to…

  • District Bridge Sculptures

    I decided to take a bit of a departure today. I’ll focus more attention on images and dive even farther into hyper-local coverage. This may interest a smaller slice of the usual 12MC audience. I took the kids to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo recently and decided to take the Memorial Bridge across the Potomac River…

  • Portage USA

    The U.S. government shutdown ended last week and I forgot that I still had one piece of unfinished business remaining. The USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) came back online so I was ready to go. I focused on Canadian portages previously, and I had a great time doing that by the way. Now I…

  • Capital Highpoints

    I once climbed to the top of the not-too-impressive highpoint of the District of Columbia. It’s even subway accessible, and you know I’m all about easy highpointing. The District highpoint is kind-of equivalent to a state highpoint — some lists include it and others do not — and that was a convenient loophole to add…

  • Middle of Nowhere

    I once searched for and found the Center of the Universe. Never mind that there were plenty of other claimants, I found the one true center naturally because the Intertubes confirmed it and of course that made it unquestionably true. It was much more difficult to find the middle of nowhere. First one must discover…

  • Georgia Capitals

    I have a soft spot for promising places now obscured. They might have been famous if history had unfolded just a little bit differently. Maybe not everyone thinks that way. Hopefully the topic appeals to a few of you anyway because that’s what this article offers. I think it was about a year ago that…

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…

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