Tag: Falls Church
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Recent NIMBY
This topic became my white whale. I came close to conquering it when I wrote Nimby Lane in 2015. Even then I joked about my problem, my seeming inability to write an article about the NIMBY phenomenon even after repeated attempts. NIMBY stood for “not in my back yard.” In that earlier article we established…
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Not Fusion, CONfusion
I remember reading through my mother’s old High School yearbook years ago when I was a child. I recall only one detail that has stuck with me ever since. The yearbook had a disproportionate number of advertisements sponsored by furniture stores that doubled as funeral parlors. I didn’t pay attention to the well-wishes of her…
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A Geo-Oddity Holiday Celebration
I faced a dilemma on the 4th of July holiday this year. I’d celebrated in style last year with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the spectacular Washington, DC show from a rooftop balcony. How could I top that for Independence Day 2010? Well, the answer is I couldn’t. The only way I could improve upon…
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Independent Cities (the Water Tower Tour)
An independent city in the United States is a rare form of government. In broad general terms, the county is the tertiary or local level of government.(1) An independent city belongs to no county and derives its authority directly from the State. This is true even if it happens to be surrounded entirely by a…
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Lucky 7 & the Ghost Kid
It all started with an innocent set of queries captured by my web stats. They seemed to follow a common theme somewhat like “strange boundary five points ma. conn.”[1] The only border anomaly between Massachusetts and Connecticut that I knew anything about was the Southwick Jog, which I featured back in October. Seven is More…
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When Categories Collide!
Here I explore a mashup of two wonderful topics covered in previous posts. I’ll combine the County Highpointers Association and the epilogue to my Smallest County Series. I decided to see whether I could reach the highpoints of both the smallest self-governing county in the United States and the smallest “county equivalent” location recognized by…
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Smallest County in the USA, Epilogue
The previous entries discussed the whole issue of “smallest county in the United States” in way more detail that it probably deserved. However, I wanted to point out one more oddity. The smallest self-governing county and the smallest independent city share a common border! So Arlington’s far western border runs straight along the entirety of…
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Smallest County in the USA, Part 3
Previous posts discussed several reasons why the three smallest counties in the United States do not function autonomously. Thus, they should not be considered counties except in name only. Independent Cities The focus of the current post is another unusual arrangement, the situation of independent cities. They function identically to most counties but in fact…