Category: Miscellaneous
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State of the Circle
It’s difficult for me to believe, but I just hit the six month point with Twelve Mile Circle. So I thought I would take a moment to look back at the site by reviewing some highlights. Maybe I’ll even reflecting briefly upon the path that lead to this point. I wasn’t sure I’d last even…
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Twelve Mile, Indiana
It all started when I saw a query for “Twelve Mile Indiana” recorded in my web access logs. That’s not too strange. After all, this is Twelve Mile Circle. Someone typed the name of an obscure farm town into a search engine and out popped my site. That’s plausible. Misdirected links land here all the…
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My Favorite Travel Tip
I’ve been traveling recently and expect to go out on a few more trips this summer. Like many business travelers, I’ve developed a few tips for the road over the years. They’re little secrets that make life away from home more bearable. Geography topics on Twelve Mile Circle sometimes bleed into other topics that interest…
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Tracking my Travels
I have returned from my brief journey to the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coasts. So let’s wrap up this series of recent posts with a final entry. As I mentioned previously, the mapping tools provided with Google Analytics simply fascinate me. Now I’ve discovered yet another use for them: recording my travels. The Resulting Map…
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Amateur Radio County Hunters
I never know what I might encounter while researching geographic oddities on the Internet. As a case in point, I came across an entire subculture of people as fascinated by counties as myself while I was putting together my recent series on the Smallest County in the United States. They call themselves the County Hunters.…
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National Geographic Museum
The Twelve Mile Circle blog fixates on geography and travel. Naturally then, it appreciates the accomplishments of the National Geographic Society over its 120 year history. What many readers may not know is that members of the public can get a peek at the results of some of their research. The society runs a small…
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New Urbanism Viewed through Maps
An urban design movement began to coalesce in the early 1980’s as a counterbalance to what planners and architects viewed as the sprawl of modern suburbs arising from the postwar environment. Practitioners called it “New Urbanism“. Organizations such as the Congress for the New Urbanism began to promote its hallmarks. Some of the features typical…
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Festival of Maps – Chicago
The ongoing Festival of Maps in Chicago [link no longer works] features the combined efforts of more than 30 cultural and scientific institutions. It portrays the significance of and reflection of maps upon culture, exploration, discovery, and the world around us. Thus, the festival incorporates the physical display of maps along with lectures, seminars and…
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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…
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Corners
I have a fascination with political boundaries, whether national, state/provincial, county, or town. Especially, I like corners where three or more join together at a point. On my website I’ve compiled trip reports about a few of those locations. Most well known, it includes the renowned 4-Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Additionally I…