Twelve Mile Circle

  • Lowest Elevation in England

    When one considers elevations below sea level, England doesn’t normally come to mind. Maybe someone thinks of the Dead Sea or Death Valley or parts of the Netherlands as natural choices. But England? Indeed, England’s lowest elevation actually sits below sea level by almost three metres. This spot exists at Holme Fen (map) in Cambridgeshire.…

  • Wollaston Lake’s Unusual Drainage

    Water flows downhill naturally towards the sea. At a continental divide, water on each side of the divide will flow towards a different sea. Sometimes the final destinations will be hundreds or even thousands of kilometres apart. Occasionally a divide will pass through a standing body of water such as a pond or a lake.…

  • Amateur Radio County Hunters

    I never know what I might encounter while researching geographic oddities on the Internet. As a case in point, I came across an entire subculture of people as fascinated by counties as myself while I was putting together my recent series on the Smallest County in the United States. They call themselves the County Hunters.…

  • Georgia Border Dispute

    Several news outlets have highlighted a resolution proposed by Rep. Harry Geisinger of the Georgia General Assembly’s House of Representatives. It would seek to move the Georgia border 1.1 miles further north. News media on both sides of the border took immediate attention. For example, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered it with”Border war with Tennessee gets…

  • Arizona Does Not Recognize Daylight Saving Time

    If my timing were better I would have discussed this a few days ago. However, this doesn’t become very visible until the last moment. Then I forget about it and go on with my life. Invariably, twice a year, right before the change to/from Daylight Saving Time, my web traffic logs start to hum with…

  • Fraser Island – World’s Largest Sand Island

    Fraser Island is a remarkable natural setting. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) even recognized it as a World Heritage Site. In granting this designation, UNESCO said, “Fraser Island lies just off the east coast of Australia. At 122 km long, it is the largest sand island in the world. Majestic remnants of…

  • National Geographic Museum

    The Twelve Mile Circle blog fixates on geography and travel. Naturally then, it appreciates the accomplishments of the National Geographic Society over its 120 year history. What many readers may not know is that members of the public can get a peek at the results of some of their research. The society runs a small…

  • The Transpeninsular Line

    I’ve been traveling recently, in fact, I’ve been closer to the Twelve Mile Circle than I’ve been in quite some time. During those travels I was able to stop by the Transpeninsular Line. In this blog I discuss various odd geographic topics that happen to interest me. The Transpeninsular Line is certainly one of those.…

  • Smallest County in the USA, Epilogue

    The previous entries discussed the whole issue of “smallest county in the United States” in way more detail that it probably deserved. However, I wanted to point out one more oddity. The smallest self-governing county and the smallest independent city share a common border! So Arlington’s far western border runs straight along the entirety of…

  • Smallest County in the USA, Part 4

    Today we crown the “Smallest County in the United States.” As noted in Parts 1 through 3 in this series, serious problems arose with the three smallest geographical units called counties (Kalawao County, Hawaii, New York County, New York and Bristol County, Rhode Island). Those three are counties in name only. They have no independently…


Latest Comments

  1. Bill you have no idea how much this insane rule has lived rent free in my friends’ and I’s heads…

  2. I know for a fact, based on communication with officers with PPB, one being my cousin who is now retired,…

  3. In Tennessee, the Central / Eastern time zone boundary follows the eastern boundaries of Marion, Sequatchie, Bledsoe, Cumberland, Fentress, and…

  4. Those annals were written in Donegal. How could they know that there wasn’t hundreds of other similar settlements throughout the…