Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Now You See It, Now You Don’t

    I thought about rivers, specifically those with segments that disappeared for awhile. It wasn’t about completely subterranean rivers although those were certainly fascinating in their own right. Rather, it was about surface rivers with underground components. I knew they existed because I had a hazy recollection of reading about one once. How rare were they,…

  • Woonerf

    In some places they’re called complete streets, home zones or shared spaces. However, I preferred the original Dutch term “woonerf” (pronounced VONE-erf). It described a concept as old as urban civilization itself although applied within a new context. It follows a very simple idea, a notion of streets shared by everyone. That concept took a…

  • Me and What Army

    The format today will be similar to the “Odds and Ends” series, a veritable pu pu platter of tasty tidbits. However, the primary difference will be that inspiration came almost entirely from the far corners of the 12MC army. I still have several other reader contributions waiting in the wings too. Please be patient if…

  • Skewed Perspective

    There was a time in the early days of Twelve Mile Circle when I used to devote entire articles to differences in distances that didn’t seem plausible, although of course the actual measurements didn’t lie. For example, sticking with the Twelve theme, the twelfth article I ever posted on 12MC all the way back in…

  • Jasper and Newton

    I got an inquiry from reader “Aaron O.” recently and it immediately interested me. That’s because he sparked my Wolf Island visit during the Riverboat Adventure the last time we corresponded. He was a county counter like many of us on 12MC including myself, and he’d encountered a curious coincidence during his collections. An Odd…

  • A Prisoner to Geo-Oddities

    I noticed a reference to a prison in Alaska that turned out to be located not too distant from where I roamed around the Kenai Peninsula during my journeys a few summers ago. It was a prison with a view, in fact it was located somewhere (map) in the background of this photo I took…

  • Hardly Tropic

    Technically, the tropics would be an area hugging the equator between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, between approximately 23°26′-or-so north and south. The two latitudes marked the extent the sun might appear directly overhead if only briefly on a single day, the summer solstice. Tropics also had a more widespread definition…

  • Kotsiubynske

    I’ve been examining maps of Ukraine closely over the last several months as I’m sure many in the 12MC audience have been doing likewise. In the course of that effort I noticed a little anomaly far removed from the action and completely unrelated to the conflict. It pertained to the Kyiv (Kiev) Oblast surrounding the…

  • Highpoints of Central America

    Today begins an effort to try to increase pushpins on the 12MC Complete Index Map for nations underrepresented by previous articles. This came from a realization that I’d continued to overlook certain parts of the world even after hundreds of posts. I’ll try to make it an occasional, relevant and unobtrusive effort, as with the…

  • Schwebefähre

    Twelve Mile Circle received a wonderful suggestion from loyal reader “Joshua D” probably six months ago. He mentioned the schwebefähre (“suspension ferry“) in Rendsburg, Germany. These structures went by various names in different languages including “transporter bridge” in English. They were so odd, so whimsical, so amazingly impractical that I found them difficult to comprehend,…

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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…