Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Arizona

  • Arizona’s Wandering Capital

    The article I discovered was more than a year old, although it was new to me when I spotted it. The title intrigued me, Did You Know: Capital Of Arizona Moved 4 Times Before Settling In Phoenix. No, actually I didn’t know that. I’ve featured similar stories of wandering capitals for other states such as…

  • Surprise!

    A visitor landed on Twelve Mile Circle from Surprise. That was the actual name of the town; Surprise, Arizona. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me. More than a hundred thousand people lived there, yet I’d never heard of it. I also learned during my search that Surprise was a surprisingly common designation. Some 238 surprises…

  • Comparison Nicknames

    I enjoyed reading Wikipedia’s List of U.S. State Nicknames recently. My amusement didn’t come from the familiar nicknames I already knew, rather it derived from the nicknames I never knew existed. Alabama was the Lizard State? Really? Did anyone else know that? Then I noticed that several of the states featured nicknames that compared them…

  • Reader Mailbag 3

    Twelve Mile Circle finds itself with an overflowing mailbag once again with lots of intriguing readers suggestions. Each one of these could probably form an entire article. However, I’ll provide the short versions today to try to clear the backlog. Once again, I’ll say gladly that 12MC has the best readers. I really appreciate learning…

  • Going Postal, Part 2

    As I mentioned in Part 1, the first installment dealt with physical post offices and this one will focus on methods of postal delivery. Both featured examples drawn primarily from the United States Postal Service’s “fun facts” page. Mule Pack animals would seem to be an antiquated method of mail delivery. Certainly horses, mules or…

  • Particularly Possessive

    I noticed that Prince George’s County, Queen Anne’s County and St. Mary’s County — all in Maryland — included the genitive apostrophe to form their possessive constructions. I’d always taken it on faith that the United States Board on Geographic Names disallowed apostrophes for that specific purpose. That’s how we ended-up with Harpers Ferry and…

  • Pueblo Deco

    I learned about an uncommon, unusual design style known as Pueblo Deco as I researched Pre-Nazi Swastika Architectural Details. Native American tribes of the US Southwest such as the Navajo used a symbol that that the general public today would call a swastika. That element carried forward to some of the derivative Pueblo Deco buildings…

  • 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…

  • Largest Artificial Lakes

    I had some fun with artificially created geographic features lately. First I featured the largest artificial islands and then islands joined artificially to the mainland. Now, I thought, I’d flip the concept to the opposite extreme. Instead of land on water, how about water on land? What might be the largest area of terrain intentionally…

  • Little Miss Muffet

    A map peculiarity reminded me of an old nursery rhyme, probably one of the most famous of them all, and likely familiar to each of us: “Little Miss MuffetSat on a tuffet,Eating her curds and whey;” I’ll get to the specific reason soon enough. Let me ramble and meander for a little while though, as…