Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: U.S. States

  • Named for Schoolcraft

    I’ve been following Every County lately while the author winds his way virtually through, well, every county. He was at the northern end of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula at the time of publication. Slowly he’s blogging his was down from the Straits of Mackinac. The name Schoolcraft(¹) kept recurring as I read through new installments, a…

  • 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…

  • Counterintuitive Saints

    I stumbled upon the history of St. George, the city in Utah. I was surprised to learn that its name had nothing to do with the Saint George I assumed it referenced. By using the title “counterintuitive saints” I meant counterintuitive to me of course. I realize some of these examples might sound completely natural…

  • What State U

    I mentioned the University of Idaho in a tangential comment on Résumé Bait and Switch. I focused on its location in Moscow, the city in Idaho not the one in Russia. However, I noticed an additional feature I didn’t discuss at the time. The western edge of the university ran amazingly close to the state…

  • Menacing Island

    I spied an island full of deviants. What else could explain a cluster of geographic features with names such as Freak, Lunatic, Menace, Germ, Moron, Filthy and Maniac? I plotted my discoveries along with several other bizarre placenames I’d encountered within a single map. This included the only spot in the United States named, and…

  • Georgia Capitals

    I have a soft spot for promising places now obscured. They might have been famous if history had unfolded just a little bit differently. Maybe not everyone thinks that way. Hopefully the topic appeals to a few of you anyway because that’s what this article offers. I think it was about a year ago that…

  • Extreme Differences of Extremes

    I was encouraged to see that I wasn’t the only person fascinated by weather extremes in So Hot, So Cold. Reader “zxo” had been thinking along similar lines a few months ago and created a series of related maps. One of those compared the differences between the highest and lowest temperatures recorded in each state.…

  • So Hot, So Cold

    The weather near my home caught my attention recently. We went straight from middle of summer directly into late Autumn overnight. Essentially we experienced unseasonably hot and sunny and then instant cold and rainy. We never seemed to get our typically wonderful October weather that we deserved. So that put me in a mood to…

  • Highpoint, Not Summit

    I was reminded recently, as I updated an old page, that not every U.S. state highpoint can be found on the summit of its parent landform. Boundaries don’t always follow geographic contours like rivers or ridges. Oftentimes segments are composed of straight lines determined by agreement or treaty or negotiation regardless of the underlying terrain.…

  • Webby Finds

    I can’t seem to make a dent in my list of potential Twelve Mile Circle articles. I keep writing steadily and in the process I run into several more morsels that go onto a never-ending pile. It appears I’ve created a perpetual motion machine. I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a very…