Category: Distance

  • When Categories Collide!

    Here I explore a mashup of two wonderful topics covered in previous posts. I’ll combine the County Highpointers Association and the epilogue to my Smallest County Series. I decided to see whether I could reach the highpoints of both the smallest self-governing county in the United States and the smallest “county equivalent” location recognized by…

  • Northernmost Ferry in Canada

    The northernmost Ferry in Canada, and indeed for all of North America, is the Arctic Red River Ferry. It serves the Gwich’in settlement of Tsiigehtchic in the Northwest Territories. This is so far north that it’s actually above the Arctic Circle. Arctic Red River Ferry The ferry provides a vital link in the continuity of…

  • Wollaston Lake’s Unusual Drainage

    Water flows downhill naturally towards the sea. At a continental divide, water on each side of the divide will flow towards a different sea. Sometimes the final destinations will be hundreds or even thousands of kilometres apart. Occasionally a divide will pass through a standing body of water such as a pond or a lake.…

  • Canada – Close to the Border

    This installment provides an instance where something sounded simple but turned out to be much more complicated than originally expected. Supposedly a disproportionately large percentage of the Canadian population lived near its southern border with the United States. So that should be a pretty easy thing to fact check, right? An Amorphous Band U.S. sources…

  • River Headwaters and Sources

    Long is the history of adventurers who explored distant lands and tangled jungles to find the true origin of mighty rivers. But rivers are not simple contiguous lines that trace back easily to a single spot. Rather they are widely spread watersheds that drain to a common outlet. There can be hundreds of liquid tendrils…

  • 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…

  • Remote Southwestern Virginia

    Recently I posted an entry about a section of Virginia that is further west than any point in West Virginia. It’s an odd fact made quite interesting primarily because the founders of a state carved from an older one consciously chose to highlight the word “west” in describing their creation. At the same time it…