Category: Cities/Towns
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Blank to Blank
I focused on towns named Welcome in a recent article here on Twelve Mile Circle, with specific attention to a sign outside of one in particular located in North Carolina: Welcome to Welcome. I wondered if other towns could cobble together similar symmetries at their city limits. All I could envision at the time was…
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Welcome
Welcome. It sounds so welcoming when used as a town name, as if the town founders and developers genuinely wanted visitors and residents alike to enjoy their time there. It sets a nice tone and a pleasant expectation. Settlements named Welcome exist in a number of areas. I’m actually a little surprised there aren’t a…
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Divine Apartments
I can’t tell if I live in an area overflowing with geo-oddities or whether my personality reflexively uncovers unusual situations wherever I happen to locate myself. Would I be equally adept at mining unusual patterns in London, Toronto, Sydney or Dakar? Perhaps. I’ve argued before that weirdness exists everywhere. Even so, my home area provides…
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Pipeline Crossroads of the World
It seems like every time I run an article about an odd appendage cobbled to the boundaries of a U.S. county, an interested reader brings an equally unusual shape to my attention. That’s great — keep them coming! The latest example arrived courtesy of Scott Surgent. He made a comment on the Merrick Strip article:…
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Ireland’s Narrow Little Neck
I looked at the Emerald Isle and noticed an anomaly. Northern Ireland comes very close to separating the tip of the Republic of Ireland from the remainder of its body. The neck constricts to perhaps as few as ten kilometres at its narrowest point between the border and the sea. It’s even shorter if we…
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Oldest Town in Ireland
I don’t know why I torture myself. Nothing good can come from this, and yet I can’t resist. I noticed a place reputed to be the “oldest town in Ireland” as I investigated an unusual geographic feature. These types of claims are notoriously tenuous and probably doubly-so in a land as ancient as Ireland. At…
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Nimrod
I noticed a lake clipped by the stair-step border in Arkansas. What kind of nimrod would name something Nimrod Lake (map)? Nimrod applies in a derogatory way in various usages of American English. It references someone rather dim-witted. However, I don’t know if that applies elsewhere in the English speaking world. Maybe our regular readers…
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Iconic Views
Skip directly to the bottom if you want to be part of a little contest. Otherwise feel free to read through my blathering extended explanation of context for a few moments. I featured a nice Google Street View image of the historic Hume School in Arlington County, Virginia recently. It seemed familiar, and not because…
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A Tale of Three Ridges
I’m not sure if I’m totally captivated by Google’s ability to suggest plausible answers while I type a query. Sometimes it’s a shortcut, other times it’s amusing, but more often than not it’s annoying. I seem to enjoy the feature more in Google Maps. It seems to geo-locate based on IP address when making suggestions…
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Dr. Howder Road
It looks like I’ll need to write an article today seeing how the world didn’t end last night. Thankfully I hedged my bets and started my research well in advance. Otherwise I’d be struggling with a suitable topic this morning. Calling Dr. Howder I’ve start with a question: Who was Dr. Howder and why does…