Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Miscellaneous

  • Big Tom the Turkey

    What do you do when you’re only the second largest city in Becker County, Minnesota? You focus on your strengths of course. So what object might properly honor a robust rural heritage, provide an iconic emblem of efficient poultry production and attract connoisseurs and aficionados of roadside kitsch from around the globe? The natural choice…

  • Geocachers Find Trinkets and Trouble

    I know there are a number of geocachers who read the Twelve Mile Circle on a regular basis, so here is a link for members of that community who may not have seen this yet. It appeared in the print edition of Washington Post this morning, and I see it is now available online: Geocachers…

  • Wandering through Real Estate

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: 12MC ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED THIS ARTICLE IN 2009. THIS FEATURE NO LONGER EXISTS IN GOOGLE MAPS] There’s been a capability in Google Maps that allows users to check real estate prices for quite awhile now. However a couple of weeks ago they added this feature to the “more” button on the top right of…

  • Weird Ohio Explorations

    A number of regular Twelve Mile Circle readers track to IP addresses in Ohio. With that in mind I thought I’d throw something special their way, a Google Maps compilation that I recently stumbled across called “Weird Ohio Explorations.” I’ve had some fun poking around the waypoints the developer included on the map. You probably…

  • Reaching Out to Africa

    I’ve been tracking the countries of origin of Twelve Mile Circle visitors for nearly two years. That shouldn’t be entirely surprising for a website that relies upon geographic content as its primary reason for existence. I’ve reported before that one of my goals is to collect at least one visitor from every country, filling in…

  • Only Rhode Island and Delaware are Smaller in Size than this State

    It’s homework time again. Somewhere some geography teacher must be handing out a take-home quiz because I’m getting pinged with identical Google queries from multiple sources. They all read, “Only Rhode Island and Delaware are smaller in size than this state.” Regular readers should feel free to skip today’s article which I’m presenting as a…

  • How Often Does This Get Stolen?

    Roadway warnings in the United States are almost always feature yellowish diamond-shaped signs. They might convey information such as upcoming curves, steep grades, dangerous intersections, rock slide areas, deer crossing areas or various other things to watch out for as one drives along. I saw a rather unusual one as I researched my recent article…

  • The Danger of a Small Sample Size

    Fair warning, little geographic content makes it onto Twelve Mile Circle today. Mostly I’ll focus on statistics. No, no, don’t go running for the door quite yet. It will be fun and actually the statistical slant will be relatively mild, grossly overly simplified with sweeping generalizations and involve no actual mathematics. I went to a…

  • Throw the Dart

    The previous topic was rather serious. So today I will take a more lighthearted approach. Several years ago there was a reoccurring story on one of the news stations where the reporter would take a dart and throw it at a map of the United States. Then he would travel to the spot and find…

  • Abingdon Plantation Ruins

    Here stand the ruins of the old Abingdon Plantation, an antebellum estate dating back to the colonial times before the United States even existed, when Virginia was subservient to England. The Alexander family, perhaps best remembered today as the namesake of the nearby independent City of Alexandria, held title to these lands. Ownership passed to…