Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Virtual Traffic Circle

    Traffic circles or roundabouts are a common design that circulates traffic safely and efficiently through intersections. They are a primary choice in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, they are much less common in the United States. Many American drivers tremble in fear when encountering one. That is the exact situation experienced this week by…

  • Flipping Lat/Long Directions

    I was looking at the Latitude / Longitude coordinates of my residence a few days ago and I decided to keep the same coordinates but switch between North and South, East and West. An easy way to do this is to drop the coordinates in Google Maps and then change between positives and negatives. So…

  • The Oddity That Got Away

    I’ve returned from Denver, Colorado. Well of course I found some time to record a couple of oddities. That’s what I do. Specifically I visited the Denver International Airport and one of the Arapahoe Exclaves. However, I didn’t exhaust the wish list I brought along with me. Maybe I should have expected that because I…

  • Arapahoe Exclaves in Denver

    I’ve kept my eye on a certain set of geo-oddities for a long time. Arapahoe County possessed multiple exclaves fully enclosed within the boundaries of Denver City/County, Colorado. Denver had to find a way to grow as people moved into the area. So they found an easy solution. They simply annexed land from their neighboring…

  • Denver’s Freaky Appendage

    Take a look at the shape of Denver, Colorado. You’ll notice an unusual appendage branching out from its northeast corner. Denver represents one of those infrequent hybrid situations where a city and a county combine to form a single entity within a common border. As a consequence, sometimes Denver acts like a city and sometimes…

  • Twelve Mile Mormons

    I get a lot of search engine queries that include the phrase, “Twelve Mile” within them. Really, that’s not so odd. One should expect that with a blog called Twelve Mile Circle. The number of places designated Twelve Mile something-or-another that turn up in these queries amazes me. Sometimes I even feature them on these…

  • Welcome to Utopia

    I don’t always understand how blog topics develop in my mind. This time curiosity led me to wonder if anyone had ever been bold enough to name a town Utopia. I never guessed someone would publish a book during the same week focusing on the same place, but I’ll get to that later. Life is…

  • Memorial Day 2010

    It’s Memorial Day, the unofficial start of the summer, but let’s not forget its greater purpose. I get an unusual audio reminder of this every year where I live. It starts building Friday evening, slowly at first as the distinctive sound of a few Harley Davidson motorcycle engines announce their presence in the neighborhood. It’s…

  • Border Pirates

    I’d always thought of piracy as a 17th Century anachronism. Then things got weird off the coast of Somalia a few years ago. Even so I considered it a distant condition borne of a failed state two oceans away. Recent reports of North American pirates have simply bewildered me. I never imagined it existed outside…

  • Playing Both Sides of the Street

    Dinosaur that I am, I still get a print copy of the newspaper each morning. We’ve laughed about that before. However, it’s an old-school habit I’ll likely not break until the publisher itself gives up on the media. I’m no Luddite and I’ve left behind a huge digital wake as I’ve cruised the Intertubes. Nonetheless…

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

  4. Dr Howder delivered me Feb 20 ,1935. Also my two sons 1957,1960. He was also my family doctor. I lived…

  5. In April/May 2025, I took a trip from home (south-central Missouri) to the 100th Meridian on the “River Road” west…