Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Cities/Towns

  • Thoughts on Buffalo

    Perception often trumps reality when people consider geographic relationships. Twelve Mile Circle enjoys exploring these disconnects — the remote corner of southwestern Virginia comes to mind — so along those same lines let’s explore the placement of Buffalo, New York. Here’s a trick question made somewhat more obvious by the fact that I’ve chosen to…

  • First Votes in New Hampshire Presidential Primary and Election

    Crawford Notch (map), and its primary community Hart’s Location, form an 11 mile by 1.5 mile protrusion outward from the northwest corner of New Hampshire’s Carroll County (see my previous entry on the irregular borders of Carroll County). However, it’s not a worthless appendix. It provides an important passageway through the White Mountains as it…

  • Santa Claus, Indiana

    In southern Indiana east of Evansville, a town of 2,000 people exudes the holiday spirit year-round. They gave it the curious name “Santa Claus” (map). What the Clause? Various sources including Wikipedia claim that the town was originally called Santa Fe when it was founded in 1856. However residents had to change the name when…

  • Carter Lake, Iowa

    Strange Maps recently featured “Shifting Like A Snake: Ancient Mississippi Courses” [link no longer works] with a beautiful rendition of its meandering riverbanks over time. The relatively flat middle portion of the United States seems particularly susceptible to these types of changes along its grand watersheds, whether the Mississippi, Missouri, Platte or others. I believe…

  • Traffic Camera Mayhem

    The urban landscape increasingly features traffic cameras. One could argue whether they exist to control driving behavior or to fill city coffers. Either way, they are not going away. So it’s not entirely surprising that the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that a local resident went off the deep end and shot a camera three times…

  • Thoughts on Los Angeles and Reno

    In an earlier post, 12MC noted that we can sometime confuse east and west in our geographic perceptions. A similar condition exists with Los Angeles, California and Reno, Nevada. Los Angeles conjures up certain images. Think of beaches, surfing and movie stars living on hillsides with expansive views of the Pacific Ocean. Most of us…

  • Washington DC Area’s Last Phone Booth

    NOTE: Twelve Mile Circle originally posted this article in November 2007. Verizon has since removed this phone booth. Sometimes changing technology can impact the landscape around it. Twelve Mile Circle notes the looming passage of an era: The Washington Post reported today on the Washington DC area’s last public phone booth. Apparently none of us…

  • Thanksgiving Towns

    Those of you in the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving on November 22nd, so in recognition of that happy occasion, Twelve Mile Circle offers you a guide for your holiday feast. No Thanksgiving is complete without Turkey, so we offer several choices on the menu: Turkey in Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas and West Virginia;…

  • Howder Street, Hillsdale, Michigan

    This website is howderfamily.com. Therefore, anything related to the Howder family is fair game. So I’m going to take an opportunity to feature something that crosses a couple of my interests, geography and genealogy. In Hillsdale Michigan I found a three-block road named Howder Street. Those of you with common surnames are probably saying “so…