Tag: Washington
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TGIF
I’ve long wanted to add Washington’s San Juan County to my county counting list and maybe someday I’ll succeed. Pondering that eventuality I began to grow increasingly curious about its only incorporated town, Friday Harbor (map). Specifically I wondered about the story behind its name. It seemed unusual to name a settlement after a day…
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Triple Letter
An unwary visitor arriving on the Twelve Mile Circle through some random search once again provided fodder for an article topic. The query forwarded by search software said: “name of the county, state and cities starts with s?” Usually this means someone is trying to complete an online geography contest or perhaps an old-school crossword…
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Checkerboarding
Checkerboarding has nothing to do with the game of checkers other than bearing a striking resemblance to its playing surface. Nor is it some awful new interrogation technique invented to pry information from suspects under duress. It is this. I discovered the anomaly on Google Maps in Oregon awhile ago while discussing Latitude Longitude Sequences…
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Life is Hard
Did anyone else notice the oddly-named park immediately to the east of Social Circle, Georgia when I posted The Chunk that Got Away in December? Well, I did. And I made a record of it intending to return later. Hard Labor Creek had to have a story. Places like that don’t get their names accidentally.…
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Short Distance Namesakes
Something has been bothering me since I mentioned the town of Washington, Virginia recently in Flip-Flopping. It claims title to the oldest town named for George Washington, platted by none other than George Washington himself in 1749. I noted that many call it Little Washington to differentiate it from nearby Washington, DC which dates to…
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US State Capital Surnames
We’ve waded through surnames that paired with nations and those that matched U.S. states. Now it’s time for the third and final installment of this investigation. Let’s look at surnames that match capital cities of U.S. states. A quick summary of the rules — I pulled information from Frequently Occurring Surnames from Census 2000 [link…
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US State Surnames
The second installment on surnames involves instances that match U.S. state names. The rules are much the same as the national surnames discussion. The source remains Frequently Occurring Surnames from Census 2000 and complete matches are better than partial matches. Once again one should feel free to follow along at home using a shared Google…
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Flip-Flopping
Despite the title, this article has nothing to do with the upcoming election. I promise. I am so tired of living in a so-called Swing State this election cycle. Seriously, I’m ready to start breaking things. The incessant phone calls, the constant barrage of negative advertising, the people who won’t quit knocking on my door,…
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The Final Leg
The adventure ends. This article will post automatically as I’m flying somewhere over the vast interior of the United States assuming my WordPress blogging software operates correctly. I will likely be home by the time many of you read this. It’s been a great two weeks of traveling through corners of Washington and Oregon I’d…
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Washington State Adventures
I’m finally in the Pacific Northwest of the United States after several months of talking about it. Actually, I’ve been out here for awhile and auto-posting articles to Twelve Mile Circle that I wrote in advance. Could you tell I wasn’t writing in real-time? The next few articles will relate to my travels through various…