Category: Cities/Towns
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The Swap
An obscure page on the U.S. Census Bureau website, Substantial Changes to Counties and County Equivalent Entities: 1970-Present may not hold much interest to the general public. Even so it’s a site that I’ve bookmarked and visit once in awhile. It’s an ongoing catalog of boundary changes that involve at least 200 people or areas…
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More First-Timers
Every once in a great while, whenever I get a little curious and begin to wonder, I go back through my older web logs and see if I’ve recorded any more first-time international visitors. This is becoming an increasingly unusual discovery. I’ve been running Google Analytics for two-and-a-half years. Almost all sovereign nations of any…
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Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole
I’ve noted my appreciation for reader comments, suggestions and input on many occasions. The quality of what people contribute is nothing short of miraculous. Sometimes an example lodges in my brain to the exclusion of all the rest. That’s what happened with the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole and I don’t know why. It’s not any more…
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What Coast are They Guarding, Exactly?
Obituaries for the late Senator Robert Byrd remarked upon many things. These included his uncanny ability to deliver vast piles of Federal dollars to his home state of West Virginia. One can debate whether that’s a positive attribute or a negative, but either way it is hard to dispute that Sen. Byrd excelled at this…
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Kenai Adventure, Part 4
The visit to the Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula is winding down. Unfortunately I will be making my way back home over the next couple of days. Those of you who follow Twelve Mile Circle for its odd geography can rejoice. I’ll return to a regular schedule of useless trivia that only we enjoy. Well, unless something…
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Kenai Adventure, Part 2
Whittier is a scenic town of perhaps two hundred people on the western side of Alaska’s Prince William Sound. There are dozens of picturesque villages dotting the coastline of the Kenai Peninsula so that’s not why I stopped here on a cold, rainy morning in July. No, I wanted to experience its rich concentration of…
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Four Runways – Four Miles
I arrived in Alaska yesterday, in Anchorage specifically. I’d posted an appeal for Alaskan geo-oddities before I left and I’ve received a number of awesome recommendations from the generous readers of Twelve Mile Circle. First up was reader “Steve” who sent me an idea by email: “in Anchorage, there is a spot within four miles…
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A Geo-Oddity Holiday Celebration
I faced a dilemma on the 4th of July holiday this year. I’d celebrated in style last year with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the spectacular Washington, DC show from a rooftop balcony. How could I top that for Independence Day 2010? Well, the answer is I couldn’t. The only way I could improve upon…
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Half-Breed Tract
My hobbies sometimes run together. That happened again as I searched an 1896 land ownership map for Wabasha County, Minnesota. There I hoped to find the footprints of a peripheral ancestor. I knew the Nineteenth Century property ownership existed, in fact I’d visited the site in person. However, I’d never seen this particular vintage map…
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Great White North(ish)
I came across another wonderful map as I reviewed the Dead Tree Media over the weekend. The City of Toronto bought a full-page advertisement hoping to entice tourists from the northeast United States to cross the border into Canada for a weekend or a few days. They presented several lighthearted graphics designed to attract the…