Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: George Washington

  • Washington, DC Boundary Stones

    Located in Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia (Visited 2000-2010) Beginning in 1791, a survey party placed stones marking the boundary of the District of Columbia, one mile apart in a diamond pattern, ten miles on a side. Two thirds of the land came from Maryland and one third from Virginia. This land formed the new capital…

  • Great Falls Park

    On the Virginia Side of the Potomac River (2008) Sitting along the wide, placid shoreline of the Potomac River in Washington, DC, it’s hard to imagine raging rapids crashing through a narrow gorge just 15 miles upstream. Here stand the mighty Great Falls, rushing from those first foothills of the Appalachian Mountains further west (map).…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 6 (A Little History)

    It seemed like we spent an inordinate amount of time chasing lighthouses, boardwalks, and breweries although we found other things too.  I’ve always been fascinated by historical sites and I scoured the area for targets.  A lot of notable events happened in the northeastern United States.  The Europeans arrived there early so I suspected the…

  • King of Prussia

    I’ve been fixated on the origins of unusual town names the last few days. First I unraveled the mystery of Snowflake; now I took aim at King of Prussia. A bunch of questions came to mind. Most prominently, why would someone name a place King of Prussia? Did it refer to a specific king? Why…

  • Presidential Layers

    Twelve Mile Circle discovered quite the layering of Presidential place names recently, completely by accident. I tried to find a better example during the larger part of an afternoon and never came close. Someone from the audience should feel free to post a comment with better results. Washington State George Washington as the first President…

  • On Canals

    In Latin, the word canna means reed, the root of canalis meaning “water pipe, groove, [or] channel.” The French language retained this term as it evolved from Latin, and the English language adopted it to describe a pipe for transporting liquid. This transformed to its modern English usage by the Seventeenth Century to represent an…

  • Inland Hurricane

    Hurricanes often hit the eastern parts of the United States. Generally they concentrate on the Atlantic side of the nation or along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. However, sometimes they move inland, weakening as they push away from open water. Those can cause massive flooding and damage. None of them ever pushed all the way…

  • More Presidential County Sorting

    I found one surprising benefit to the tedious research that went into the recent Last Presidential Counties article. Now I could sort through the data differently and come up with several unexpected yet equally fascinating facts. It produced enough material for a second article. But don’t think of these as leftovers! They stand on their…

  • Jasper and Newton

    I got an inquiry from reader “Aaron O.” recently and it immediately interested me. That’s because he sparked my Wolf Island visit during the Riverboat Adventure the last time we corresponded. He was a county counter like many of us on 12MC including myself, and he’d encountered a curious coincidence during his collections. An Odd…

  • 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…