Twelve Mile Circle
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Virginia, West of West Virginia
West Virginia split from Virginia in 1863 during the height of the Civil War. It elected to remain with the Union while the rest of the Commonwealth remained firmly entrenched within the Confederacy. Tensions based on divergent economies, cultures and geography simmered between the western and eastern portions of Virginia for decades leading up to…
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Fewest County Borders – Part III: Red Lake Co., MN
We’ve established that a county in the United States can have zero borders if it is an island and one border if it is a peninsula. However, there are no fully landlocked counties with just a single border. But what about landlocked counties that have two borders? Surprisingly there seems to be only one lone…
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Fewest County Borders – Part II: Peninsulas (Door Co., WI)
Only islands have the potential for zero county borders. However, what if we extend the search from zero borders to one border? The United States contains no fully-landlocked counties with a single border. Independent Cities Don’t Count Several independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia do meet this definition though. Examples include Fairfax City surrounded…
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Fewest County Borders – Part I: Hawaii County, HI
Technically the fewest number of county borders is zero, a situation that occurs frequently on islands. As an example, county borders do not split individual Hawaiian islands except for Molokai. Most of it sits within Maui County. Even so, it also cradles minuscule Kalowao County – the smallest county in the United States – on…
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Howder Street, Hillsdale, Michigan
This website is howderfamily.com. Therefore, anything related to the Howder family is fair game. So I’m going to take an opportunity to feature something that crosses a couple of my interests, geography and genealogy. In Hillsdale Michigan I found a three-block road named Howder Street. Those of you with common surnames are probably saying “so…
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Michigan’s Lost Peninsula
One of the oddities that interests me is when a territory is broken into two or more non-contiguous pieces. Some become rather famous, like the small chunk of the United States in northern Minnesota that can only be reached via Canada at Lake of the Woods. A similar condition exists between and within certain states…
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Introduction and Purpose
Welcome to the Twelve Mile Circle! This site highlights unusual places on maps that just don’t seem to make sense. These may include state highpoints, non-contiguous boundaries, latitude/longitude confluences, and other trivial geographic points. This serves as a companion to my travel pages. Over there I detail some of my actual trips to Strange Geography…
Latest Comments
what is the total population that lives now in the land given back to Virginia should it be part of…
Great post. Did you ever notice interesting architecture? I remember seeing some styles reminiscent of the imperial palaces when I…
It’s not so much a matter of independence for the Hopi as it is the geographical reality of the Hopi…
Park ranger at Chalmette (New Orleans) Battlefield let me pull up the Union Jack 20 years ago. My dad would…
The Arlington portion is easy, ~245,000. Alexandria is more difficult because it annexed a lot of land outside of the…