Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Indiana

  • Heartland, Part 4 (Beyond Covered)

    I couldn’t seem to shake my ever-growing fascination with bridges during my recent Heartland excursion. It started a few years ago, specifically with covered bridges, and expanded to various other styles for some unknown reason. I wouldn’t put this particular fascination at the same level as my county counting or my brewery obsessions although it…

  • Heartland, Part 3 (Foiled by Memorial Day)

    I figured I’d have to give this article a sneaky title or nobody would read it. Once again I decided to focus a portion of my journey on local breweries and brewpubs found along our route. These posts tend to underperform as some of the least popular items on Twelve Mile Circle. I know that…

  • Lickety-Split

    I’ve begun to plan a long-distance road trip for April that I’m not quite ready to reveal to the Twelve Mile Circle audience. However, offering just a hint, I noticed an oddly named town in Indiana called French Lick. It fell remarkably close to Santa Claus, the subject of one of the earliest articles on…

  • Boone Scraps

    Daniel Boone became a legend even during his own lifetime. He blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap, opening lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement. Then he served as a military officer on the frontier during the Revolutionary War. He even became a state legislator. Boone kept pushing farther west throughout his life, always…

  • Even More Weird Placenames

    Twelve Mile Circle has been on a bit of an odd placenames fixation as of late. I found a few more examples. However, they didn’t have enough of a story behind them to justify an entire article on any one of them. So I figured I’d resurrect an earlier series and title this “Even More…

  • Where They Lived as Children

    My recent trip to western North Carolina was like the gift that kept on giving for Twelve Mile Circle article ideas. Sadly I’ve reached the end of the line on that thread so this will be the last article that contains a connection to that earlier adventure. As noted in a prior installment, I enjoyed…

  • 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…

  • Head of the Class

    I thought back to my school days when a teacher would call roll alphabetically. Naturally people with surnames like Anderson would get the first call. Mine fell somewhere in the middle so I had to pay attention for a little while. Then I could daydream for the rest of the drill. However, I always felt…

  • Nestling Newark

    It began as a simple enough proposition once I noticed Newark, Ohio on a map. Was it related somehow to the Newark in New Jersey, and what about the Newark in Delaware? Did they all intertwine in a way? It sounded like a mystery that I needed to solve. Newark, New Jersey I noticed Newark,…

  • American Angola

    I discovered distant relatives during my ongoing family research who lived in Angola, New York about a century ago. That seemed like an odd location for a town to carry such a name. I wondered if it could have been a coincidence. Maybe early settlers corrupted a Native American word used by the Iroquois who…