Author: Twelve Mile Circle
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India Loves 12MC
Twelve Mile Circle noticed increasing visitor traffic from India over the last couple of years and particularly within the last several months. Maybe that’s a recognition of growing Internet access within the subcontinent and perhaps a general improvement in its technological infrastructure. I’d prefer to think of it in simpler terms: India loves 12MC. This…
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Republic of Indian Stream
The short-lived Republic of Indian Stream owed its existence to frustrations rooted in divergent interpretations of the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain. The treaty included a number of provisions including those designed to establish firm boundaries between Canada and the United States. Ironically, a…
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Colonias
I failed to mention a specific Milwaukee example in the recent I Before E Like in Milwaukie article. That was intentional. I noticed a rather unusual reference included within the Geographic Names Information System that deserved further observation. This one featured two adjoining neighborhoods. They had the dubious distinction of sharing a name with a…
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I Before E Like in Milwaukie
“I Before E Like in Milwaukie.” If that phrase doesn’t grate on one’s nerves or otherwise sound completely wrong, it probably means the reader came from a location outside of the United States. Or came from Oregon. Because Milwaukie does exist in Oregon. I discovered that recently while examining 12MC reader statistics. Someone visited the…
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Streets Named After…
We’ve all seen lists created from Google’s unusual auto-search recommendations. I noticed a few entertaining results as I looked for Streets Named After… well, I forget what I was searching for exactly because I was so enthralled by the false positives. Some were mundane. I expected streets named after celebrities, trees, birds, presidents and such,…
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Reversible
It dawned on me recently, as I drove around the Washington, DC area, that there seemed to be an inordinate number of reversible road lanes that switched directions on regular schedules. The example that got me thinking about this was a one-block section of Washington Boulevard (map) on the western edge of Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood.…
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States Based on Closest State Capital
Twelve Mile Circle receives a fair amount of reader mail and suggestions. Usually it leads to pleasant surprises and sometimes even an article. That happened recently with a map generated by Steve Spivey who graciously granted permission for me to share it with the 12MC audience. Steve had been combing through the very earliest days…
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Seriously Broken
The number of broken place names seemed amazing. I didn’t know what led people to memorialize broken objects, just noted that they they did and it amused me. Broken Lakes, Broken Ridges, Broken Points, Broken Valleys and on and on. The list was so exhaustive that I had a terrible time limiting my selection. So…
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Brewerytown
Twelve Mile Circle reflects my personal interests including those that transcend geo-oddities. Those include my fascination with zymurgy and breweriana. Recent examples included Geo-BREWities and More Geo-BREWities that examined breweries referencing geography within their names. I do try to tie these themes back to geography in some manner since that’s the notional objective of 12MC.…
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Nest of Spies
I’ve mentioned several times before the extremely localized nature of many geo-oddities. Often I’ve used my very own hometown of Arlington County, Virginia as an ongoing proxy. So I created a bicycle ride over the weekend that highlighted a specific theme that I’ve not discussed before. Being located so close to the nation’s capital, Arlington…