Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Northern Panhandle of West Virginia

    Anyone looking at a West Virginia map would immediately notice its northern panhandle. It rose high above the rest of the state like a flagpole. This narrow splinter ran 64 miles (103 kilometres) due north, wedged tightly between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Its width also narrowed sometimes to only 4 miles (6 km). Four counties occupied…

  • Boone Scraps

    Daniel Boone became a legend even during his own lifetime. He blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap, opening lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement. Then he served as a military officer on the frontier during the Revolutionary War. He even became a state legislator. Boone kept pushing farther west throughout his life, always…

  • Playing Games

    Twelve Mile Circle felt like playing games. More to the point, I’d collected a few town names tied to games that I wanted to share. I did something similar awhile ago with the sport of Lawn Bowls, a particularly popular choice for names. Atlantic City also made the cut with Monopoly although the town inspired…

  • Residual Braniff

    I’m not sure if I ever flew on Braniff Airlines although I certainly recognized the name. That’s why I mentioned it when I spotted Braniff Street outside of Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas in the previous article. A Very Brief History of Braniff Braniff International Airways began flying in 1928, the creation of brothers Thomas…

  • High-Flying Counties

    With all my discussions of Chicago’s Midway and O’Hare airports recently, it dawned on me that both of them fell within Cook County, Illinois. Well, technically a corner of O’Hare extended into neighboring DuPage County. But the important stuff like the terminals and most of the runways remained within Cook so I called it close…

  • Trivial Chicago

    A most wonderful website caught my attention as I researched Connecting Through Midway. I don’t like to recommend websites because they seem to disappear right after I mention them. Seriously, my endorsements create a cloud of bad luck that jinxes any site unfortunate enough to get one. The Chicago Public Library produced this site however…

  • Connecting Through Midway

    I hadn’t flown through Chicago’s Midway Airport much until recently. Then Southwest Airlines started offering flights at my local airport and many of its connections passed through Midway. I always hated connecting flights — and flying in general — although I admitted a preference for Midway over O’Hare. I never pondered its name though. Midway…

  • Counting Border Crossings – Updated

    Several years ago, way back in November 2009, Twelve Mile Circle published an article called Counting Border Crossings. It revealed a new way to track travels suggested by loyal reader Jon Persky. Many people count nations, states, provinces, département, territories, counties or whatever. Jon’s method counted a place only when an adventurer traversed each border…

  • Richmond Ad Infinitum

    I came across an interesting naming string as I researched Noble Layers. It didn’t quite fit the definition of that earlier article. Even so I found it fascinating in its own right, and it deserved recognition. Richemont, Seine-Maritime It began, maybe, in a remote corner of Normandy a millennium ago. There stood the village of…

  • Noble Layers

    Washington State provided a nice example of presidential layering down to a county, a community and ultimately to a body of water. I couldn’t find any better example. However, I wondered whether I might be able to do something similar on a different tack. Many eastern states reflected another set of leaders, the noble men…

Latest Comments

  1. Been there Once for a few years. In 76 &77. Ran cooperative store. Even though it was very isolated It…

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