Category: Cities/Towns
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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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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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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…
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Salty, Saltier, Saltiest, Salton
Loyal reader “Lyn” contacted Twelve Mile Circle a few weeks ago. With it came a stack of digital images from a recent road trip to California’s Salton Sea. This has long been on my list of places I’d love to see some day, and I still hope that will happen. So I certainly enjoyed and…
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Bluefield on the Border
When I was asked to chauffeur a runner to a half-marathon with a course that crossed between the conjoined cities of Bluefield on the border between Virginia and West Virginia, how could I say no? A long weekend of fall foliage and geo-oddities? I felt like I was dropped into an episode of Weekend Roady.…
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Convergence at the End
A weird pattern emerged as I researched an article a couple of months ago and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Was it a geo-oddity or simply an oddity? Would it fit within the subject matter of Twelve Mile Circle? Would some readers find it too bizarre? Ultimately I decided I could focus…