Tag: Victoria
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Saint Alban Spreads
Various saints appeared in recent Twelve Mile Circle articles, most recently On the Feast Day. I didn’t intent to fixate on them. The names of saints, both notable and obscure, kept coming to my attention as I researched other articles. I couldn’t simply ignore them. Take Saint Alban, for instance. Perhaps if I lived in…
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Where the Stadium Once Stood
I guess the recent Ghost Signs got me thinking about the way things used to be in an earlier age. My memory circled back to a time when professional baseball didn’t exist in Washington, DC and we used to travel to Baltimore to see the Orioles play. This happened a lot when I was a…
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Outside of California
I spotted a town in Maryland called California. I’d known about it for awhile. It always seemed odd to have a town in one state named for another, especially one located an entire continent away. So I figured there must be a connection somewhere in there. Maybe it had roots in the California Gold Rush…
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Shaped Like it Sounds (Street Edition)
Several months ago, right after I returned from my Dust Bowl trip and tallied my new County Counts, I noticed that one of them, Lincoln County, Colorado was sort-of shaped like the letter L. So that led to Shaped Like it Sounds, a brief collection of States, Counties and Towns that mirrored the first letter…
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Ferry Hopping
I’m completely humbled by the response to the recent “How Many Islands in the USA Require Ferry Travel” article. I found 64 islands matching the criteria and stood back smugly until user-after-user uncovered additional instances that I’d overlooked. The number of islands currently stands at 77. It wouldn’t surprise me if it continued to grow.…
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Pennsylvanians are From Mars, Texans are From Venus
I keep a close eye on the geographic characteristics of Twelve Mile Circle visitors, which seems natural for a geo-oddity website. I also generate article topics from viewer anomalies. For example, I never knew about Mars in Pennsylvania (map) until a Martian visitor, one from a spot north of Pittsburgh as it turned out, jumped…
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Welcome
Welcome. It sounds so welcoming when used as a town name, as if the town founders and developers genuinely wanted visitors and residents alike to enjoy their time there. It sets a nice tone and a pleasant expectation. Settlements named Welcome exist in a number of areas. I’m actually a little surprised there aren’t a…