Tag: Ghost Town
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Fayette Historic State Park
Delta County; Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (September 2000) We drove along scenic shoreline through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between Manistique and Escanaba on U.S. Route 2. It to just a short detour down Lake Michigan’s Garden Peninsula to reach the Fayette Historic State Park and its lovingly preserved ghost town (map). Fayette once housed 500 residents in…
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Great Falls Park
On the Virginia Side of the Potomac River (2008) Sitting along the wide, placid shoreline of the Potomac River in Washington, DC, it’s hard to imagine raging rapids crashing through a narrow gorge just 15 miles upstream. Here stand the mighty Great Falls, rushing from those first foothills of the Appalachian Mountains further west (map).…
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Rockies Loop, Part 5 (Sites)
I always need at least one extra article to collect all the odds and ends that don’t fit anywhere else. Generally those involve locations or topics that might be a little off center or peculiar. In other words, they certainly fit the definition of things needing a Twelve Mile Circle visit, and maybe even worthy…
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Last Chance
Speaking of odd town names (we were just speaking of those, weren’t we?), what about Last Chance? Every place deserved a last chance, I supposed. The U.S. Geographic Names Information System listed more than three hundred of them. Many — no surprise — aligned with mining claims. Also they frequently referenced ditches, streams and gulches,…
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Playing Games
Twelve Mile Circle felt like playing games. More to the point, I’d collected a few town names tied to games that I wanted to share. I did something similar awhile ago with the sport of Lawn Bowls, a particularly popular choice for names. Atlantic City also made the cut with Monopoly although the town inspired…
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Where’s Waldo?
I selected US Route 23 through Ohio as we drove back from Michigan. This would have been a long detour in normal circumstances. However I wanted to count a few new counties so I cut through a quiet slice of the state instead. So hours passed, boredom hovered nearby and I invented little non sequiturs…
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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…
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Hot Springs Everywhere
Twelve Mile Circle has featured hot springs before. There was Hot Springs, Virginia in Taking a Bath. There was Hot Springs County, Wyoming and its county seat of Thermopolis in The Largest Smallest US County. Geothermal activities existed in many places and I’d taken notice plenty of times. Nonetheless it mildly surprised me when I…
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Good Fortuna
Fortuna was the Roman goddess of prosperity and luck. That would be an excellent name for any location hoping for some of that mojo rub off. I was aware of a Fortuna in California (map), probably the largest Fortuna in the United States. People there lived in the heart of redwood country. I’m sure it’s…
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Creative Marketing
It’s wonderful when an article results in a comment that inspires an article, creating a self-perpetuating geo-oddity cycle. In this instance loyal reader “Pfly” mentioned the curious case of Guadalupe, California that nearly changed its name to Guadalupe Beach. However it was actually located several miles from the nearest beach. NOT on the Beach Local…