Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Alaska

  • Political Access

    No less than the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) made an interesting claim. They called it “Other Interstate Trivia, but I considered it Gold. “All but five state capitals are served by the interstate highway system. Those that are not served are: Juneau, AK; Dover, DE; Jefferson City, MO; Carson City, NV;…

  • Split the Name Again

    In the first installment I discussed various Louisiana Parishes that shared the same root name, differing only by the addition of an east or a west directional prefix. I noted that sharing of county or county-equivalent names in this manner was surprisingly rare in the United States. The only other place where one sees this…

  • Airport Ferries

    I’ve mentioned my strangely popular ferry pages before. They receive lots of search engine referrals in a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg manner: did the site’s success create higher rankings on search engine algorithms or did search engines create the site’s popularity, or a bit of both in a ratcheting cycle? I dunno (frankly not going…

  • National Preserves

    I mentioned 12MC reader Scott a couple of weeks ago in reference to the Park You Cannot Visit. He also set me up with a lot of other National Park Service trivia that I’ll cover from time-to-time as I’m able to work it into the publication schedule. As an example, he wondered if I’d ever…

  • Nearly Willow

    Many months ago I explored the Worst State Capital Locations and received a number of thoughtful and insightful comments. I examined conditions from various perspectives including the most inconveniently located state capital for an individual traveling from the largest city. Juneau, Alaska won that part of the competition hands-down. Residents from Anchorage face a daunting…

  • There’s a Juno in Texas but not in Alaska

    Did any Alaskan readers of Twelve Mile Circle watch the NBC Nightly News this evening? When did your state capital become Juno? I happened to be sort-of watching it in the background as I was working on an article I’ll post tomorrow. The story centered on a Next Generation air traffic control system using satellite…

  • X to Nowhere

    There are many places that have been labeled a “[Name You Favorite Transportation Infrastructure] to Nowhere”. Sometimes they exist to reference an abandoned site. Other times they focus on an improvement that seemed to benefit an unusually small constituency. I’ll mention two rather well-known instances briefly today. Naturally I will ignore the political issues involved…

  • The Misplaced County Seat

    We’ve had lots of talk recently about inconveniently located state capitals and misaligned county seats. We’ve mined that thread for about all it’s worth so this is the last one for awhile, I promise. However, while I was conducting that research I came across an instance where the county seat is completely misplaced, and yet…

  • Worst State Capital Location

    Loyal Reader “Greg” read my recent article about whether the county seat of Benton Co., Washington should move because the center of population shifted overwhelmingly to the east. Greg said, “To go up an order of subdivision, I wonder what US state has the smallest capital city by population compared to (a) the state as…

  • Even More Unusual Signs

    It’s been about fourteen months since I posted an installment of odd signs that I’d encountered during my travels. I like unusual things whether they’re geo-oddities or mundane objects that seem out of whack. Occasionally I feel compelled to share them even if nobody else can summon the same level of enthusiasm. If they cause…