Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Random Canadian

    The pursuit of geo-oddities is a passion of mine, but not my only one. History, and by extension personal history (genealogy) is another. Sometimes the two intertwine. I’ve long known of a family line tangential to mine that associated with the early history of Canadian, Texas (map). Their involvement began with the founding of Canadian…

  • Memorable Crossings (Mexico)

    I examined several border crossings between South Africa and its neighbors that are available in Google Street View in the previous installment of this series. This time I move back across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, examining similar situations in Mexico where there is actually much greater image coverage. United States There are numerous…

  • Memorable Crossings (South Africa)

    Google Street View came to South Africa as part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It remains the only portion of continental Africa[1] with Street View coverage as of the time I posted this in February 2011. So it definitely provides opportunities to explore South Africa. However, it leaves me wanting for images of its…

  • International Clip

    I’ve always had a thing about collecting and counting geography. You’ve seen plenty of examples of that on Twelve Mile Circle before. For example, reference my ongoing tally of U.S. counties that I have visited. Sometimes these “visits” are exceedingly brief, even measuring to mere seconds. Yet, they still count according to the arbitrary rules…

  • Penciling-In Reagan

    I discussed the erasure of Martin Van Buren from geographic features as his popularity waned during the Nineteenth Century. Interestingly the opposite phenomenon seems to be happening with a more modern historical figure, Ronald Reagan. His stock continues to climb as the years progress. Also his February 6, 1911, birthday generated great publicity on its…

  • Erasing Van Buren

    Political debates come and go. What happens, however, when people live in a place named after a politician they despise? That doesn’t happen very often anymore. Just about every geographic location got its name a long time ago, at least in the United States. The nation expanded furiously in the first half of the Nineteenth…

  • Low Clearance

    I’ve seen an unusual website mentioned on several aggregator and blogging websites called 11foot8.com. I’m sure that some of you’ve seen it too and it probably doesn’t need much introduction. It features an 11 foot 8 inch (3.56 metre) overpass on Gregson Street in Durham, North Carolina that has the propensity to peel the tops…

  • Back to the Clustr

    I appended a ClustrMap to Twelve Mile Circle a year ago, yesterday. That’s the little world map image that displays a few boxes down in the right-hand column marked by the “visitor locations” header. The way that the ClustrMap works apparently is that it compiles a map of visitors for an entire year, then it…

  • Egypt Returning to Normal?

    Much of the world watched events unfold in Egypt during January and into February 2011. I know I couldn’t pull away from CNN on the day that pro-government thugs pushed through Tahrir Square on camels and horseback (map). I kept watching into the wee hours as running street battles unfolded on live television. So I…

  • Vulnerable to Invasion

    All our talk of invasions, mostly imagined, got me thinking. What about the actual invasions of the United States? Oceans on either side certainly limited the possibilities and reduced the number of occurrences to a mere handful. So how many times have invaders assaulted the United States? As with much we discuss on the Twelve…

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  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…