Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Roads

  • Odds and Ends 4

    The mailbag runneth over with great finds and suggestions from the generous readers of the Twelve Mile Circle audience. I’ll combine that with a couple of my recent discoveries and voilà, instant article. I’m not sure if I’m feeling lazy or if I’m still in a food coma from the recent Thanksgiving holiday but either…

  • Subterranean Continental Divide

    I have a fascination with tunnels. So I like to feature them regularly, including articles such as Superlative Tunnels, Tunnel Under the Border, and Tunnels, Bridges, Lifts and Inclines. Also I’ve fixated on boundaries and watersheds such as the Hydrological Apex of North America. It seems odd to me that I hadn’t yet encountered a…

  • Damfino

    I received an interesting tip by email about an old street in San Antonio, Texas identified as “Damfino” (as in “Damn if I know”). Our reader even provided a copy of an 1885 map for the online Library of Congress collection, which I’ve excerpted below. He theorized that the street name may have been a…

  • My Little Poni

    I completed my annual business trip to Williamsburg, Virginia earlier this week. I’ve featured articles arising from these periodic visits in the past including A Colonial Capital, The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry and Revisiting the Swap. I felt like I’d mined that area rather extensively. I had no plans to report anything further. Something made me smile…

  • Rural Free Delivery

    Rural Free Delivery, often distilled down to its recognizable initials RFD, is a cornerstone principal of postal service in the United States. It is an element we take for granted. Mail will be delivered to every corner of the nation at a reasonable price that does not penalize citizens for living in rural areas. However…

  • Shortest International Bridge

    I remember the story of the the alleged World’s Shortest International Bridge making the rounds of the Intertubes a few years ago. I ignored it intentionally, and not so much because of what I thought about its claim. Actually, I had no way to confirm or dispute it so it didn’t really matter to me.…

  • Adventures along Maryland I-70/68

    The weather turned nasty on the second day of my MDVAWV adventure. Suddenly my hiking plans no longer seemed quite as attractive as the day before. I took to the road and explored through western Maryland instead. The route I describe below is a composite. The portion east of Hagerstown took place as I drove…

  • Circling the MDVAWV Tripoint

    I tagged along while my wife attended a work-related conference in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. The in-laws watched the kids back home. That provided me with a rare couple of days to wander around the woods while my wife schmoozed with conference attendees. The area was amazingly rich in significant events that shaped a nation.…

  • Monopoly

    I think I’ve always known that the game of Monopoly was based on street names in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It goes back to the earliest days of my geo-geekdom, a useless nugget that I latched onto so long ago that I don’t know when or where I learned it. Monopoly was the first board…

  • Transcontinental Clip

    I like to photograph unusual signs as I travel, either for my personal amusement of for future reference. One such occasion presented itself at the Union Station train museum during my recent visit to Ogden, Utah. It displayed a large map of the original Overland Route, the one known better as the Transcontinental Railroad. It…