Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Month: January 2012

  • Carnage, Slaughter and Mayhem

    I enjoy corresponding with Steve from Connecticut Museum Quest. We seem to have a similar appreciation for maps, odd coincidences and strangely-named places. I first came across Steve and his wonderfully-written CTMQ as I investigated the Southwick Jog more than three years ago. I think Mystic Seaport may be the only Connecticut museum I’ve ever…

  • Things I Wonder

    I maintain a long list of potential topics on a spreadsheet and currently it stretches several hundred rows. Some of my story ideas remain on the sheet for months or years. That’s because they must have been interesting enough to record but not substantial enough to create a standalone article. Let me winnow down the…

  • Runaway Truck!

    I went on a brief roadtrip last Autumn, an experience I described in more detail in my Adventures along Maryland I-70/68. In that article I mentioned a massive road cut at Sideling Hill. However, I couldn’t find a reason to highlight another feature, a runaway truck ramp just west of the cut as one descends…

  • New Counties

    I had so much fun hunting through counties with the recent Google Maps boundary release that I simply kept going. Then I fixated on a set of United States counties somehow considered “New.” Well they started with the prefix New, and referenced something older. Several states included that format so I figured I’d find plenty…

  • Victory: County Lines on Google Maps

    The day has finally arrived. Google just added United States county lines (and more!) to its maps. I’ve been hoping for this development for the last two years. I first pushed readers to express their interest way back in February 2010. I’d mention it periodically (OK, whined), usually within the context of “wouldn’t it be…

  • Radioactive

    I follow the various geo-blogs on an RSS reader like many of you do. Google’s LatLong Blog announced an imagery update on January 9 as it does periodically. So I checked the list of improvements as is my normal custom. One of the towns updated with high resolution aerial imagery sparked my curiosity: Radium Springs,…

  • The Pinetree Line

    I’m not sure how I stumbled upon the Pinetree Line. It seemed to be a particularly descriptive term though. So I guess I tucked it away on my list of “things to ponder later.” It was a Cold War manifestation, an effort by Canada and the United States to provide an early warning system should…

  • 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…

  • A Secret Revealed

    Don’t you hate misleading headlines? I’m not really revealing a secret because it hides in plain sight. The information was publicly available as long as one knew where to search for it. I’m talking about a so-called “secret” Interstate highway route recently outed by the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. Unsigned Interstates There…

  • Airport Ferries

    I’ve mentioned my strangely popular ferry pages before. They receive lots of search engine referrals in a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg manner: did the site’s success create higher rankings on search engine algorithms or did search engines create the site’s popularity, or a bit of both in a ratcheting cycle? I dunno (frankly not going…