Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Cities/Towns

  • New Sweden

    The New Sweden colony first made an appearance in Twelve Mile Circle a few weeks ago. Back then I spoke of an ancient trust, on Burlington Island in the Delaware River. Swedes don’t get much attention for their colonial history in North America. The narrative generally focuses upon English, Spanish and French interests. Sometimes Dutch…

  • Prime Meridian Through Spain

    I noticed a query dropped upon the Twelve Mile Circle from one of the search engines. It was a fairly straight-forward request for information, as far as those things go. My anonymous visitor wanted to know about the “Madrid prime meridian line” Do we sense a problem? Where Does the Prime Meridian Go? The knee-jerk…

  • Abandoned Canals in Canada

    Generally I know exactly how I come up with each topic I hand-pick for Twelve Mile Circle articles. That’s not the case here. I don’t recall the exact sequence of steps that led to abandoned canals in Canada. Well, I understand the Canadian part. I figured it would be a smaller universe. Also it’s been…

  • Slices of Belgium

    Immigration and the fingerprints it leaves behind sometimes finds its way to Twelve Mile Circle as a topic of conversation. The legacy remains even after a successful assimilation and disbursement of the original population. I’m curious particularly about the smallest populations of settlers in new lands — and it might be difficult to get more…

  • Odds and Ends 5

    It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an “Odds and Ends” compilation. That’s where I combine lots of minor yet noteworthy topics that don’t provide enough material to stand on their own into one completely disjointed article. Frankly a lot of these miscellaneous topics have been going onto my social media sites lately so…

  • Captains Less Prestigious

    I had no trouble finding populated places named for Captain James Cook, the legendary 18th Century explorer and navigator, along the edges of the waters he sailed. However, plenty of other captains sailed the oceans during that same period. Naturally I wondered if the maps memorialized others similarly. Could I find other places named “Captain…

  • Zig Zag

    What was that 1980’s song, “One Thing Leads to Another?” Right. You know the one. Put that on in the background and use that as our Twelve Mile Circle theme song for the day. I mentioned my frantic search to resolve a Move the Road dilemma that the loyal 12MC audience resolved soon thereafter. I…

  • Super City

    Metropolis. The city where Superman hangs his cape. It’s a huge place on the order of New York or Chicago or somewhere of that magnitude. This is the image that comes to mind whenever I hear about Metropolis. Sure it’s also a renowned German movie from the silent film era. However, the Twelve Mile Circle…

  • Green River Island

    Green River Island is one of those places that seems to belong to the wrong state. In this instance it feels like it should be part of Indiana but it’s actually part of Kentucky. It hardly seems like an island either although vestiges of its old topography continue to remain visible. Rather, the “island” has…

  • 10-4 Good Buddy

    I’ve received a steady stream of visitors far removed from the geo-geek community on my Smokey and the Bandit Route article over the last several months. I didn’t anticipate or perhaps didn’t appreciate that the geographic construct behind a movie made over thirty years ago would still elicit much curiosity. Apparently I was wrong. Released…