Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Texas

  • Sweet Home, uh, Oregon

    I’m still working out all of the details on my upcoming trip to Oregon and Washington later this summer. The path seems to be getting clearer to me as I fill in missing pieces. It appears I’m going to have to apologize in advance to my Portland readers. The route will likely skirt the city…

  • First Name, Surname Symmetry

    I wondered recently about towns bearing someone’s first name combined with counties bearing the same person’s last name. This spark came after learning that Gail was the county seat of Borden County, Texas. Both honored Gail Borden, the condensed milk guy (and so much more). The only other instance of this first name – surname…

  • Condensed Texas

    I first came across Borden County, Texas in More Land than People, Part 2. It’s amongst the 63 out of 3,143 counties or equivalents where square mileage exceeds the number of its inhabitants. For Borden (map), that was 897.4 square miles for only 641 people recorded in the 2010 Decennial Census so there was plenty…

  • Wyoming, Texas

    No, as far as I know there isn’t a town of Wyoming in Texas. Believe me, I’d hoped there might be such a place but the Geographic Names Information System provided by the U.S. Geological Survey doesn’t list one. Conversely there aren’t many items of significance named Texas in Wyoming either, other than a mine,…

  • Barrier Island Superlatives

    I have a thing for islands but I think you already knew that. Barrier island fascinate me in particular and these narrow landforms hug coastlines all over the world. Their sand moves continuously, sculpting by tides, waves and winds according to the elements. They’re ephemeral and they change. So this left me to wonder about…

  • Smokey and the Bandit’s Route

    Also see the companion article: 10-4 Good Buddy. Ah, the 1970’s, that cultural hangover. Disco ruled a world of polyester. A sea of avocado and harvest gold shag carpeting stretched from coast-to-coast. A CB radio craze allowed wannabe truckers to exclaim “ten four good buddy”. Who could forget such heady times? A purely escapist movie…

  • More Land than People, Part 2

    I discussed the easternmost and southernmost United States counties with fewer than a single resident per square mile in the first installment. That was Kenedy County, Texas. Now, let’s review the map of fractional county population densities once again and take a closer look. There aren’t very many; only 63 out of 3,143 counties or…

  • More Land than People

    It’s a new year on the Twelve Mile Circle. I finished a lot of necessary maintenance behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks when nobody would be reading anything anyway, and I’m ready to start rolling-out new material. What better way to start a new day than by finishing up a bit of…

  • Not Quite Obscure Enough

    There are places so obscure that they achieve a level of notoriety in geo-oddity circles. Examples would include Loving County, Texas and Kalawao County, Hawaii, which are both revered in the county counting community. No county has fewer residents than Loving with only 82 people recorded in the 2010 Decennial Census. Kalawao comes in a…

  • No, Not That One

    I was trying to find something on Buffalo, New York. I can’t remember what it was exactly, although that’s not actually important to the discussion. However, a random search led me to another Buffalo, a town with the same name in Wyoming. I considered it rather odd. When one thinks of Buffalo as a city,…