Month: August 2014

  • Revisiting Street View Extremes

    Time moves forward, an unstoppable force. We all must face that awful truth as we age. On a happier thought, that allowed me to revisit a Twelve Mile Circle article from nearly five years ago. Maybe the conditions changed, or maybe not. Let’s find out. In February 2010 I wrote Streetview Beats a Deadhorse. Back…

  • Most Frequent U.S. Communities

    The Geographic Names Information System had a little “frequently asked questions” page I somehow overlooked until a couple of days ago. Most of the FAQ dealt with mundane issues although a few gems hid within its midst. For example, “The most frequently occurring community name continues to vary. In the past year, it was Midway…

  • Canadian Landmark

    I found a genuine Canadian landmark in the form of Landmark, Manitoba (map). This was a village of about a thousand people in the Rural Municipality of Taché, southeast of Winnipeg. Sure I found other Landmarks in Canada including mountains in British Columbia and Yukon plus a point in Newfoundland and Labrador. However, only one…

  • U.S. States’ Lowest County Highpoints

    The setup might take a little explanation. I wanted to find the lowest county highpoint in each of the fifty United States. There would only be one per state based upon a series of lists provided by Peakbagger.com. That might lead to speculation that a better solution would involve examining all county highpoints regardless of…

  • Sunrise

    Strange queries land on Twelve Mile Circle. Recently I noticed search engines referencing questions in the form of “does the sun rise (or set) in [name a location].” and sending them to the site. Since I’m pretty sure those would be daily events for most of us except perhaps at extreme latitudes during very specific…

  • Insignificant Synonyms

    I sometimes used synonyms or euphemisms for small, inconsequential places. They even find their way into Twelve Mile Circle articles occasionally. They were just generic terms for middle of nowhere spots where nothing every happened and nothing ever would for the remaining history of the known universe. However, they didn’t really exist. Or did they?…

  • My Smallest Park

    Twelve Mile Circle published a very rare guest post in March 2011 discussing Geo-Oddities of Portland, Oregon. It featured several unusual items including the famous Mill Ends Park (map). The Notion Readers might be familiar with the spot. It’s garnered a lot of attention from mainstream sources over the years because of its diminutive size.…

  • Cactus

    The previous article about Spanish punctuation embedded in various place names in the United States made my mind wander to the Desert Southwest. Then it led me down a mental tangent related to cacti for some unknown reason. As I daydreamed, I considered, perhaps I should examine places named cactus. There weren’t many, and even…

  • Officially Tilde

    I received a message recently from a 12MC reader in Cañon City, Colorado. I couldn’t help noticing the tilde, the little squiggle over the letter “ñ.” That of course was punctuation used in Spanish, not English, so it caught my eye. Very few places in the United States include diacritical marks recognized officially by the…

  • Turpan Depression

    Are you ready for another installment in my occasional series on lowpoints? I am. Everyone always focuses on the greatest of mountains and the highest of elevations. Lowpoints need a little love too, especially those below sea level, and the further down the better. I turned my attention to China, a nation that does not…