Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 5 (Americana)

    One of the reasons I enjoyed the various marathon series offered by Mainly Marathons — other than the fact that I didn’t have to run them — was that they provided an opportunity to see parts of the country not normally experienced by casual tourists. I’ve done this twice now, first with the Dustbowl Series…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 4 (History)

    The rich history of the Lower Mississippi valley didn’t start with the Europeans. What they left behind however became an indelible legacy along the banks of a river that mirrored the growing pains of a nascent nation. These continued to reverberate into modern times. We attempted to immerse ourselves in various facets spanning multiple centuries.…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 3 (Borders)

    Europeans began to subdivide the Lower Mississippi watershed into various colonial claims, and the nascent United States carved it further into states, counties and even smaller units. They used the rivers as boundaries in some instances, and straight lines laid arbitrarily in others. Both interacted to form an awesome string of geo-oddities throughout the region.…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 2 (Original Inhabitants)

    Long before Europeans and their descendants tagged the Lower Mississippi River valley with a cornucopia of artificial lines, forming states, and counties, and meridians and so forth, the area already had a remarkable human history. Native Americans left behind laboriously-constructed earthen mounds. Those served a variety of residential, ceremonial and funereal purposes all along the…

  • Riverboat Adventure, Part 1 (The River)

    12MC is back! Thank you for bearing with me while I took a brief respite from posting new articles. There were logistical reasons. Each race in the five state series took much of the morning, then we’d have to drive to the next location (stopping at geo-oddity sites along the way), arrive late each afternoon,…

  • On Hiatus

    The Twelve Mile Circle will take a little break while I’m collecting new material during the Riverboat Excursion. The driving distances are too great and the number of sites visited too numerous to do them justice in a bunch of rushed articles written from the road. Be assured, I’m gathering great stuff and the wait…

  • The Pitch

    A long-term member of the 12MC community and I were discussing dream jobs lately, ones that combined our slightly obsessive-compulsive list-making tendencies with our respective divergent interests. Mine focused on geographic and historic oddities of multiple flavors tied together with a healthy string of County Counting progressions. The trick, as we thought about it, was…

  • Named for Schoolcraft

    I’ve been following Every County lately while the author winds his way virtually through, well, every county. He was at the northern end of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula at the time of publication. Slowly he’s blogging his was down from the Straits of Mackinac. The name Schoolcraft(¹) kept recurring as I read through new installments, a…

  • Interstate Highway Time Zone Crossings

    I’ve noticed a lot of search engine queries lately seeking additional information about points along US Interstate Highways where travelers cross from one time zone into another. I’m going to do that myself soon on my upcoming trip and I couldn’t find a comprehensive resource either. Maybe there’s one out there hidden away in a…

  • More Full Names

    I enjoyed compiling a list of Full Name counties in the United States earlier this week. In a comment “The Basement Geographer” improved the article significantly with a list of similarly-constructed counties in Canada. It was great work on his part. Readers should refer back to his comment and check it out. That led me…

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…