Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Airport Visits

    All that talk of doughnut county captures and airport-only visits in Counting Down a few days ago led me to consider that I’d been to a lot of airports during my wanderings over the years. One would think that I would have counted all of those before, seeing how I make lists of just about…

  • Oglala Lakota County

    I pointed out that the the Wade Hampton Census Area in Alaska became the Kusilvak Census Area in a recent Reader Mailbag article. Alaska’s census areas exists as a unique construct. They serve as a convenient parceling of the Unorganized Borough while being considered “county equivalents” by the Federal government for a number of statistical…

  • Counting Down

    Most comments on Twelve Mile Circle are made to articles written recently, primarily to those posted within the past few days. That doesn’t prevent readers from commenting on older articles though. I leave the comment window open indefinitely. People wander their way to the site however they manage to do it, and I assume most…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 6 (Inspirations)

    I made it to the final installment of the Center of the Nation articles at long last. I hope the Twelve Mile Circle audience enjoyed riding along vicariously. I included links to all of the previous articles at the bottom of the page for those who may have missed a few. I figured I’d wrap…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 5 (Wildlife)

    My route crossed paths with all sorts of wildlife, some more wild than others as we rolled through endless terrain in a land largely devoid of people. We never pushed deep into backcountry so I didn’t see anything too exotic — and no rattlesnakes thank goodness, which were supposedly quite common — still our roadside…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 4 (Terrain)

    There weren’t a lot of people on the Northern Plains and their settlements appeared only sporadically. Out there amongst the expansive void a place of a thousand residents qualified as a city and drivers might not see another one for an hour. I wondered, where did people even buy their groceries? That didn’t mean the…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 3 (Trails)

    Evidence of earlier migrations appeared as we rolled along our Center of the Nation journey. It evoked a time when people crossed these High Plains without benefit of motors. Initially the migration involved early Nineteenth Century explorers and hunters of European descent pushing from the East Coast into lands long settled by Native Americans. Then…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 2 (States and Counties)

    Transporting a participant through a grueling six day, six state race series created a huge benefit for a geo-geek such as myself, the inherent need to cover a lot of territory. I’d driven through parts of the target area previously on a cross-country trip many years ago. I’d completed the typical tourist trek through the…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 1 (Center?)

    I returned from my much-anticipated Center of the Nation journey about a week ago. Those readers who followed the 12MC Twitter already received a steady dose of foreshadowing about this event. It’s my final installment from the 2015 Twelve Mile Circle “season of travel.” I took a lot of great trips over the last several…

  • Directional Upstart Eclipses Namesake

    Loyal reader Cary suggested an article idea that built upon a previous topic, Upstart Eclipses Namesake. In that previous posting I offered “new” places that grew more prominent than their original namesakes. Examples I proposed included New Zealand (vs. Zealand), New South Wales (vs. South Wales) and others. There were several comments and a lively…

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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…