Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: U.S. Counties

  • Make Tracks to Midland

    So I had to admit it. My odd fascination with Every County’s slow-motion serial recitation of literally every county progressed towards an obsession. I couldn’t stop checking the author’s crawling pace once every few days. Then he arrived vicariously at Midland County, Michigan about a week ago where he noted that it “got its name…

  • Taking a Bath

    I continued to ponder how I might complete my county-counting adventures for the 133 counties and independent cities within the Commonwealth Virginia, with a dozen still remaining on my list. It might be feasible after a long weekend of concentrated efforts, I considered. Maybe someday. How lucky to be from somewhere like Delaware with only…

  • Dubious References

    I don’t think of Twelve Mile Circle as a definitive source. I do my best to produce an acceptable level of accuracy. Admittedly, I’m not an authority on most geo-oddities even when I’ve been fortunate enough to visit them on the ground. It amuses me to find instances of Wikipedia citing 12MC as a footnoted…

  • Schoolcraft Daze

    Now where were we before I took off for a couple of weeks on my Riverboat Adventure? I believe I was discussing Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and various places named in his honor scattered through the Upper-Midwest of the United States, principally Michigan and Minnesota. So I learned long ago that leaving things unsaid could be…

  • The Pitch

    A long-term member of the 12MC community and I were discussing dream jobs lately, ones that combined our slightly obsessive-compulsive list-making tendencies with our respective divergent interests. Mine focused on geographic and historic oddities of multiple flavors tied together with a healthy string of County Counting progressions. The trick, as we thought about it, was…

  • Interstate Highway Time Zone Crossings

    I’ve noticed a lot of search engine queries lately seeking additional information about points along US Interstate Highways where travelers cross from one time zone into another. I’m going to do that myself soon on my upcoming trip and I couldn’t find a comprehensive resource either. Maybe there’s one out there hidden away in a…

  • Full Name Counties

    Almost exactly a year ago, 12MC published Jeff Davis, a treatise on the use of the Confederate leader’s full name as a geographic identifier at the county level of government. Davis County wasn’t a good enough name for some of those deeply-Southern states. No, it had to be Jeff Davis or the more formal Jefferson…

  • Pre-Nazi Swastika Architectural Details

    I traveled into the Twelve Mile Circle — the Delaware geo-oddity that inspired the name for this site — while visiting with some dear friends last weekend. In Wilmington, at Rodney Square specifically, I happened to glance up. There I noticed the wonderful Egyptian Revival architectural details on the Wilmington Public Library. My earlier Egyptian…

  • United States of Colors

    I began to think about counties with colors in their names as I investigated the etymology and history of Blue Earth County, Minnesota in further detail. My mind began to wander down this completely unrelated tangent. Soon enough I found myself hunting through a list of US counties for examples and plotting them on a…

  • Blue Earth Revisited

    After awhile experienced 12MC readers can sort-of guess where things are heading. I knew I ran that risk in the recent Blue Earth article. The early draft began to climb towards a thousand words and I still wanted to cover several more topics. Strategically, I split the article into two separate parts and wondered if…