Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Native American

  • Black Gold

    I noticed an interesting road at the Oklahoma State Fair Park called Black Gold Drive. I thought it was interesting how they’d intertwined their state history into the fairgrounds. Black Gold of course represents a natural resource found abundantly within the state. Other avenues there included Land Rush Street and the less-than-politically-correct Red Mans Path.…

  • Twelve Mile Square Reservation

    Twelve Mile Circle meets a Twelve Mile Square. I thought I’d found just about every subject with a Twelve Mile theme, every town, every lake, every building, even every bottle. Apparently I missed one, although in my own defense I’ll note that it was a different shape. It formed a square rather than a circle:…

  • That’s Siouan for Water

    I noticed an interesting geographic prefix as I explored Minnedosa, Manitoba in Triple Letter – Canada. The same prefix also applied to one of the individual United States, specifically Minnesota. In both cases the “Minne” portion derived from a Siouan word for water. Minnedosa was Flowing Water and Minnesota was Cloudy Water. I wondered if…

  • Surrounded in Time

    I noticed an anomaly when I researched Kansas Mountain Time for an article last January. Very little of Kansas remains in Mountain Time. Also, I suspect the entire state will flip eventually to Central Time. That hasn’t happened yet and the anomaly will remain in place until that occurs. A Three-Sided Occurrence Notice the far…

  • Jeff Davis

    I received an interesting query from loyal reader “Katy” via the 12MC Google+(1) account the other day. She wanted to find towns named after people that included the namesakes’ first and last names.(2) Several possibilities came to mind and one name in particular, Jefferson Davis, kept recurring. Jefferson Davis — which I’ll mention primarily for…

  • Connecticut Extremes: Are We There Yet?

    It’s been a protracted series of Extreme Connecticut geography articles and you’re probably growing a little weary of them by now. I was in a similar position somewhere around this same point during our long and busy adventure. Nonetheless, nobody had ever visited the state’s four cardinal extremities in a single day before. We were…

  • John Day’s Day

    Bill Williams’ Fingerprints appeared on the Twelve Mile Circle about a year ago. Mr. Williams was “one of the classic mountain men of the old west”. His name carried forward to various geographic features throughout Arizona, as I noted at the time. This inspired longtime reader Pfly to comment, “This post makes me think about…

  • Numerical Place Names

    I wondered if I could find any place names composed entirely of numbers. Thus, while communities such as Thousand Oaks and Twentynine Palms in California were interesting in a sense, they wouldn’t do for my purpose. I wanted to find places that transcended the precision of a description to reach entirely higher circles of absurdity.…

  • Jamestown Field Trip

    I had the pleasure of serving as a parent chaperone for my son’s school field trip to Jamestown last week. Admittedly, the thought of accompanying two busloads of children aged nine-to-ten sounded a bit daunting. And of course it definitely had its challenges at times. I thought it was going to unfold like an uglier…

  • My Little Poni

    I completed my annual business trip to Williamsburg, Virginia earlier this week. I’ve featured articles arising from these periodic visits in the past including A Colonial Capital, The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry and Revisiting the Swap. I felt like I’d mined that area rather extensively. I had no plans to report anything further. Something made me smile…