Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Mmm… Doughnut

    My mind gravitates back to doughnuts (or is it donuts?) following up on a long-ago article, the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole. The concept fascinates me. It occurs when a town completely surrounds a separately-governed entity, generally another town. That leaves a doughnut town — one with the hole in it — and a doughnut-hole town, the…

  • Sports Facilities I Never Imagined

    My mind fixates on patterns and I’ve noticed a number of unusual sport coincidences in recent days. It started with an acquaintance who mentioned her disinterest in Reno, Nevada. She simply didn’t want to go back there again this year. Of course I knew she didn’t gamble. So I wondered why she would go to…

  • Tragically Hundred

    Right before reader Brent traveled through Manitoba and recorded his visit to the Dominion Land Survey’s Prime Meridian, he and I were discussing the 100th Meridian west of Greenwich. He shared this 1992 video from The Tragically Hip, “At The Hundredth Meridian“ Go ahead and turn it up if you like. It will be good…

  • Canada’s Dominion Land Survey Meridian

    One of my favorite activities and side-benefits on Twelve Mile Circle involves thoughtful correspondence. That happens when readers contact me offline, directly through the email link. We have opportunities to share experiences, discuss geo-oddities in a little more detail and develop story lines that sometimes result in full-blown articles. Casual readers may not realize the…

  • Looney Tunes Geography

    One of my favorite idea-generators came to the rescue again this evening. A random visitor arrived on the Twelve Mile Circle through an unusual search engine query. They were trying to research place names used in Looney Tunes cartoons. That sounds entertaining. I’ll take a shot at that. Let’s start with a definition. I’ll try…

  • The Park You Cannot Visit

    The U.S. National Park Service currently has 394 units, with one more arriving soon. These include all manner of parks, monuments, historic sites, battlefields, seashores, recreation areas, trails and various other interesting designations. Each one is a beloved national treasure. They include the famous like Yellowstone National Park. But they also include the more obscure…

  • Utah Adventure, Part 4

    Did someone say “Utah Adventures?” I focused our efforts primarily on northern Utah but I did slop across the borders of neighboring states. I will concentrate on some of those meanderings in this final installment. Nevada I wrote about my quick jaunt to Nevada earlier so I won’t rehash that story again (map). It wasn’t…

  • Utah Adventure, Part 3

    The latest installment is about salt. It’s hard to talk about northern Utah without eventually turning our attention to salt. The vast white expanse on the left half of this satellite image is a gigantic salt patch. This forms the Great Salt Lake Desert. The smaller greenish-blue area in the upper-right is the salt water…

  • Utah Adventure, Part 2

    I’m now well into the Utah trip and we’ve shifted our focus from the mountains to the desert. Golden Spike National Historic Site The Golden Spike National Historic Site marks the point of completion of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States in 1869. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I am not exaggerating…

  • Utah Adventure, Part 1

    The hunt for geo-oddities in northern Utah is well underway. The family will want to visit more recognizable sights so I’ll have to mix in a few “normal” tourist activities along the way. I have to maintain a careful balance. Thus I need just enough to keep them entertained while giving me an opportunity to…

Latest Comments

  2. what is the total population that lives now in the land given back to Virginia should it be part of…

  5. Park ranger at Chalmette (New Orleans) Battlefield let me pull up the Union Jack 20 years ago. My dad would…