Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Tennessee

  • Center of Power

    Pioneers migrating into the central sections of the United States during the Nineteenth Century found a unique opportunity to shape their governance. Counties formed across the prairie in precise straight lines. Often they platted the local seat of government somewhere conveniently in the middle. Names bestowed upon these geographic slices frequently reflected prominent local businessmen…

  • World’s Fair Towers

    I suppose this is something of a Part 3 addendum to the recent Southern Swing articles although maybe it’s not truly the case. Perhaps it would be better to call it “inspired” by those earlier articles. We broke the return trip into a two-day event with an overnight stay in Knoxville, Tennessee. The hotel happened…

  • Me and What Army

    The format today will be similar to the “Odds and Ends” series, a veritable pu pu platter of tasty tidbits. However, the primary difference will be that inspiration came almost entirely from the far corners of the 12MC army. I still have several other reader contributions waiting in the wings too. Please be patient if…

  • Skewed Perspective

    There was a time in the early days of Twelve Mile Circle when I used to devote entire articles to differences in distances that didn’t seem plausible, although of course the actual measurements didn’t lie. For example, sticking with the Twelve theme, the twelfth article I ever posted on 12MC all the way back in…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 6 (Signs)

    I thought I’d focus the final installment of the Riverboat Adventure on something a little more whimsical. Sometimes I have trouble remembering facts for a given place so I take photographs of informational signs. Usually this happens at historical sites. Sometimes signs provide greater explanation or context than what’s available on Internet pages. They serve…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 5 (Americana)

    One of the reasons I enjoyed the various marathon series offered by Mainly Marathons — other than the fact that I didn’t have to run them — was that they provided an opportunity to see parts of the country not normally experienced by casual tourists. I’ve done this twice now, first with the Dustbowl Series…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 4 (History)

    The rich history of the Lower Mississippi valley didn’t start with the Europeans. What they left behind however became an indelible legacy along the banks of a river that mirrored the growing pains of a nascent nation. These continued to reverberate into modern times. We attempted to immerse ourselves in various facets spanning multiple centuries.…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 1 (The River)

    12MC is back! Thank you for bearing with me while I took a brief respite from posting new articles. There were logistical reasons. Each race in the five state series took much of the morning, then we’d have to drive to the next location (stopping at geo-oddity sites along the way), arrive late each afternoon,…

  • Label Me Elmo

    I’ll display Elmo one final time, just like in Counterintuitive Saints, even though this article will have absolutely nothing to do with Sesame Street. Why? Because that’s what 12MC wants to do at the moment. How often does one get to feature Elmo? I should probably recap some other salient points from the earlier article…

  • Move Along, Nothing to See Here

    The signs claimed “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.” It felt mildly amusing, maybe even a tiny bit clever the first time — the first time! — I saw one of their ilk several years ago. They mimicked the look-and-feel of genuine historical markers with faux cast iron, bold font, adorned with a couple…