Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • 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,…

  • Revisiting Street View Extremes

    Time moves forward, an unstoppable force. We all must face that awful truth as we age. On a happier thought, that allowed me to revisit a Twelve Mile Circle article from nearly five years ago. Maybe the conditions changed, or maybe not. Let’s find out. In February 2010 I wrote Streetview Beats a Deadhorse. Back…

  • Most Frequent U.S. Communities

    The Geographic Names Information System had a little “frequently asked questions” page I somehow overlooked until a couple of days ago. Most of the FAQ dealt with mundane issues although a few gems hid within its midst. For example, “The most frequently occurring community name continues to vary. In the past year, it was Midway…

  • Canadian Landmark

    I found a genuine Canadian landmark in the form of Landmark, Manitoba (map). This was a village of about a thousand people in the Rural Municipality of Taché, southeast of Winnipeg. Sure I found other Landmarks in Canada including mountains in British Columbia and Yukon plus a point in Newfoundland and Labrador. However, only one…

Latest Comments

  1. The British flag continues to fly at Roche Harbor, a couple miles north of English Camp.

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

  4. As an Alaskan I always wondered why Interstates were a big deal. From my point of view a road went…