Tag: Watershed

  • 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…

  • Counting West Virginia, Day 4 (Oddities)

    Every trip seems to end too quickly. We soon hit the final leg of our northern West Virginia odyssey and headed home. Two uncaptured counties remained on the itinerary, Taylor and Tucker. They formed doughnut holes on my map and they needed to be removed. Oh, how I hated those little white splotches. That completely…

  • Potomac in Oregon

    Is there a Potomac River in Oregon? I’m only aware of the one that forms a boundary between Virginia and Maryland/Washington, DC and out to West Virginia. However, I’ve been receiving a slow but steady trickle of search engine queries on the topic for the last several weeks. Maybe I’m missing something. Is there a…

  • Revisiting the Chicago River

    Many months ago I posted an article with a somewhat cryptic name, “They Reversed the Chicago River.” The story centered on an early twentieth century engineering marvel that actually changed the direction of a significant waterway. It made sure any sewage from the burgeoning City of Chicago wouldn’t foul the city’s drinking water. An Engineering…

  • The Great River Road

    The Great River Road is a bit of a misnomer for it isn’t a single road. Rather many different roads commingle along a common theme, tracing a route along the Mississippi River. This scenic designation runs contiguously through ten of the United States. By extension it also enters two Canadian Provinces, a total length of…

  • Canada Draining to the Gulf of Mexico

    Several distinct continental divides cross through Canada. Water flows eventually to one of five different bodies of water depending on its point of origination. Huge portions of Canadian territory rest within watersheds draining to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and Hudson Bay. However one small corner of Alberta and Saskatchewan drains to the Gulf…