Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Delaware

  • Lighthouse Adventures

    The 93 Lighthouses I have visited I noticed that I have visited quite a few lighthouse as a result of my journeys, and many have been featured in these travel pages since I began posting them a number of years ago. I didn’t start as a lighthouse collector, it just sort-of happened, but now I…

  • Counties in Delaware that I have Visited

    There are 3 Counties in Delaware – “The First State“ Also be sure to see my United States County Counting Page for the rest of the states. I have visited 3 Counties = 100% of Counties in Delaware Counties visited are colored-in; counties still needing to be visited are blank. Map created using Mob Rule.…

  • A Winter Day at the Beach

    Rehoboth Beach, Sussex Co., Delaware, USA (Photos from 2004, video from 2008) Sometimes we just have to get out of the house and do something during the middle of winter. It felt like we’d been trapped inside for months and we were starting to get a little stir-crazy. Regular readers will know that we don’t…

  • Fenwick Island Lighthouse & Transpeninsular Line

    Fenwick Island, Delaware, USA (2008) A lighthouse rose above remote Fenwick Island in 1859.  It filled a critical 60-mile gap between Cape Henlopen and Assateague Island (map). The structure housed a third order Fresnel lens with an 83 foot focal plane in its slender white tower. Amazingly the same Fresnel lens operates today. This stands…

  • Fort Delaware

    Pea Patch Island, New Castle Co., Delaware (July 2000) The newly-minted United States government identified the need for a fort along the Delaware River. This would help protect the approaches to major port cities such as Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The military eyed Pea Patch Island, a swampy swath of river deposit that barely…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 5 (Positive Signs)

    I have a thing for signs and I noticed that the Jersey Shore had plenty of interesting things to tell us.  They displayed a tale of my week-long visit down the coastline in words and pictures.  I didn’t intend to search for signs, nor did I have any particular plan to remember them.  They appeared…

  • State Nickname Streets

    I focused an inordinate amount of time and attention on Wikipedia’s List of U.S. State Nicknames as I wrote the Comparison Nicknames article. That wasn’t the original intent of the effort however, just an interesting byproduct that spun into its own topic. I’d been working on something else, something finally revealed today. It all began…

  • 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…

  • Highpoint to Lowpoint

    Twelve Mile Circle received an intriguing question from reader “Cary” a few days ago. Cary, a professional mapmaker, noticed something interesting while conducting research: the amazing proximity of Minnesota’s highest point of elevation to its lowest. This led to a natural question. Was this the shortest distance between a state highpoint and a lowpoint? I’d…

  • Pre-Nazi Swastika Architectural Details

    I traveled into the Twelve Mile Circle — the Delaware geo-oddity that inspired the name for this site — while visiting with some dear friends last weekend. In Wilmington, at Rodney Square specifically, I happened to glance up. There I noticed the wonderful Egyptian Revival architectural details on the Wilmington Public Library. My earlier Egyptian…