Category: Cities/Towns
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Jeff Davis
I received an interesting query from loyal reader “Katy” via the 12MC Google+(1) account the other day. She wanted to find towns named after people that included the namesakes’ first and last names.(2) Several possibilities came to mind and one name in particular, Jefferson Davis, kept recurring. Jefferson Davis — which I’ll mention primarily for…
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Race Across America
The recently concluded Dust Bowl Marathon Series continues to play on my mind. Five towns served as a home base during the event. Of course, each one of them rolled out the red carpet for us. Ulysses, Kansas stepped it up an additional notch above the high bar exhibited by the rest. They seemed to…
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Most Remote Chinese Restaurants in North America
I wonder if I’ve observed a genuine phenomenon or if I’m falling into a confirmation bias trap. Everywhere I travel, and I meander through extremely rural areas as a matter of preference, I notice Chinese restaurants. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this peculiarity. I posted Not Fusion, CONfusion a couple of years ago.…
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International Capitals in the USA
The capital of a nation is often its most important city, or certainly one that citizens would recognize by name if not. Place that exact name into another nation and its significance would almost always drop. I wondered if I could find the name of every other capital city within the physical boundaries of the…
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Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 5 (Epilogue)
It’s good to be back home. However, I will always cherish my brief journey to the Dust Bowl territory of the lower Great Plains. I enjoyed and appreciated the beauty of the emptiness, the towns appearing fifteen miles distant first noticeable by their distinctive grain elevators, dodging and getting caught in clouds of dust, and…
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Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 2 (Sea of Grass)
An odd feature of my Dust Bowl trip is that I drive for hours with little or nothing to see beyond the awesome natural beauty of the Great Plains until it’s punctuated by a tightly-bound space overflowing with geographic anomalies and historical sites. One such place is Morton County in the far southwestern corner of…
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Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 1 (Getting There)
It was a long time coming and I’d talked about it since last autumn. The Dust Bowl trip finally arrived. We flew to Denver, Colorado as our starting point. Certainly there were closer airports, however none of the others had non-stop flights or cheaper fares. I viewed it as an opportunity to capture some previously…
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Three Notches
Marks on trees served as road signs during North America’s colonial times, a period when much of the population was illiterate. Certain patterns of slashes or notches conveyed specific information about the nature of a pike or landmarks a traveler might find farther down down its path. Three notches served as a frequent glyph although…
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Canadian Ethnic Enclave
The intersection of my various hobbies provides a nice tangential benefit for Twelve Mile Circle. It offers a steady stream of curiosities and article ideas. I like to look through census records and use Street View to see if I can spy on the former homes of ancestors and distant relatives. Many of the census…
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The Other Mount Vernon
I posted an article a few days ago that I called The Other White House. I thought I was being rather topical by posting it on Presidents Day, featuring a bunch of White Houses that shared nothing in common with the famous one in Washington, DC except for a name. So I felt pretty smug,…