Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Placentia is Not a Flat Cake

    The trouble with words that look almost alike is that they can mean completely different things. Case in point, I noticed a 12MC website hit from a visitor in Placentia, a town in Newfoundland & Labrador, in Canada. I seemed to recall somewhere in the recesses of my mind that there was also a Placentia…

  • Move Along, Nothing to See Here

    The signs claimed “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.” It felt mildly amusing, maybe even a tiny bit clever the first time — the first time! — I saw one of their ilk several years ago. They mimicked the look-and-feel of genuine historical markers with faux cast iron, bold font, adorned with a couple…

  • Public Bridleway

    I noticed that OpenStreetMap included “Tag:highway=bridleway” along with “designation=public_bridleway.” That’s awesome! A bridleway is an equestrian trail or a horse-friendly road. Perhaps it might even be considered a highway for horses according to the OpenStreeMap tag. Some of them trace back to ancient transit corridors. However, others are of more modern vintage having been developed…

  • 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…

  • Goin’ Down to Garland

    I stumbled upon an old thread on the Straight Dope message boards discussing the naming of streets. Responsible parties included the usual cast of characters such as developers, county governments, planning commissions, city councils, working-level bureaucrats, and the like. One contributor on that message board mentioned that: “Several years ago, I was working with a…

  • Colonial Colleges

    I made a passing reference to the Colonial Colleges of the United States recently in King’s College Tract. There are over four thousand colleges and universities in the U.S. that award degrees today. But only nine of them — the so-called Colonial Colleges — acquired a charter before the United States gained independence. So I…

  • Deadly Fog

    I was thinking recently about a huge multi-vehicle accident that happened in Virginia a few months ago. That one involved 77 vehicles in thick fog. Of course it was a terrible tragedy that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. It also made me wonder whether it was the worst possible, or whether there were others even…

  • King’s College Tract

    I came across a tiny, minor footnote as I researched Yankee Doodle Dunce, an account of allegedly independent nations that joined the United States. This story involved Vermont specifically. The situation occurred within the confusing, overlapping New York royal decrees and New Hampshire Grants. The turmoil of the American Revolutionary War further compounded the situation.…

  • Reader Mailbag

    This is a rather special edition in a long series of intermittent Odds and Ends articles. I will call it Reader Mailbag for the obvious reason. Yes, comments, emails and tweets from Twelve Mile Circle readers inspired this one more than anything else. These topics were all completely unknown to me previously. So maybe I…

Latest Comments

  1. The British flag continues to fly at Roche Harbor, a couple miles north of English Camp.

  3. Been there Once for a few years. In 76 &77. Ran cooperative store. Even though it was very isolated It…

  4. As an Alaskan I always wondered why Interstates were a big deal. From my point of view a road went…