I noticed an anomaly when I researched Kansas Mountain Time for an article last January. Very little of Kansas remains in Mountain Time anymore and I suspect the entire state will flip eventually to Central Time. That hasn’t happened yet and the anomaly will remain in place until that occurs.

Notice the far northwestern corner of Kansas, just north of the Mountain Time counties. That’s Cheyenne County. Cheyenne switched to Central Time in approximately 1955 according to the Statoids website. Meanwhile, western Nebraska observes Mountain Time as does all of Colorado. That created a situation where Cheyenne County is surrounded by its neighboring time zone on three sides. Drive east from Cheyenne and one will remain in Central Time. Drive north, south or west, and one will enter Mountain Time upon passing the county border.

This can be observed more clearly in the image I created in the National Atlas of the United States’ Map Maker, one of the few online resources that allows one to create a map with time zones and county borders. I considered whether this might be an unusual situation, a rare instance of time zone herniation with a county completely protruding into its neighbors, or whether it was entirely more common. I went through the time/county overlay in Map Maker and found only one other example, well, four-fifths of an example actually. Cheyenne County is either unique or nearly unique, with a different time zone found completely on three sides.

The kind-of, maybe, sorta instance

This is Malheur County, Oregon. I’ve mentioned Malheur before. It’s the corner of Oregon in Mountain Time that allows the trick question about an Atlantic state and a Pacific state only one hour apart (and on the same time for a single hour each year when the clocks are turned back in autumn). However, look closely, and it’s apparently that a small portion of Malheur’s southern end observes Pacific Time like the rest of Oregon.

The separation is defined by Title 49, Section 71.9 of the US Code of Federal Regulations:
"thence southerly along the west line of Malheur County to the southwest corner of T. 35 S., R. 37 E.; thence east to the Idaho-Oregon boundary". It’s a matter of drawing a line along the designated township and range boundary which corresponds to a latitude at approximately 42.45° north. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere (map)

Most of Malheur observes Mountain Time because it’s so far removed from Oregon’s cities that it’s more aligned economically with places in Idaho. That doesn’t explain the lower one-fifth, though. I looked a little closer.

Actually the southern portion accommodates residents of McDermitt, a town split by two states. The majority of McDermitt falls on the Nevada side of the border, on the left side of the Street View image. Nevada follows Pacific Time. Thus it makes sense for this small corner of Malheur to follow Pacific Time too. It makes even more sense when one considers that 75% of the population is associated with the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe.

Do we count Malheur as a second example in spite of it’s split personality, or do we consider Cheyenne a truly unique occurrence?

Random Unrelated Item

This nondescript grass path in a generic housing development leads to the Historic Tucker Family Cemetery, which is the oldest African American cemetery in the former English colonies of North America. It dates back to the arrival of slavery in the Jamestown colony in 1619. The Hampton Rhodes (Virginia) Daily Press described how it was long neglected and focused on recent restoration efforts. It’s shocking how a place of such historic significance could have fallen into such disrepair for the past half-century. History lurks everywhere. Even in the suburbs.

I wrote about Abandoned Canals in Canada several months ago. That prompted 12MC reader Bill Harris to comment on an unusual re-purposing of an abandoned canal across the border in the United States. He noted that a portion of the Erie Canal that originally flowed through downtown Rochester, NY (part of my ancestors’ journey) was abandoned due to rerouting. It was subsequently drained, covered, and transformed into a tunnel for a light rail system. I thought it was a great comment, I conducted additional research and… somehow I forgot about it. Recently I came across my original notes so I’m posting what I intended to write last September.

Rochester, New York

Flickr by Patrick Haney via Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)

The Rochester Subway website provided a summary:

The Erie Canal, responsible for much of upstate New York’s economic growth, was considered an obsolete eyesore by the turn of the century. The state legislature allocated money for relocation of the canal, and the last boat traveled through the city locks in 1919. After much debate about what to do with the abandoned canal bed, the city of Rochester then purchased the land for construction of a trolley subway that would greatly reduce the amount of surface traffic in the populous city. Eight years after the last canal boat was piloted through the city, the Rochester Industrial & Rapid Transit Railway was opened to the public in December 1927.

The covered-over canal became a subway tunnel and the surface above it became Broad Street (map). The subway wasn’t very successful although it somehow managed to sputter along until the mid 1950′s. The portion of Interstate 490 east of Rochester’s Inner Loop replaced much of the former canal and subway

Sections of tunnel still exist inside the city’s central core although largely hidden from sight. It pokes into view very briefly at the Broad Street Bridge which was designed originally as the Second Genesee Aqueduct of the Erie Canal, carrying the canal across the Genesee River. From street-level it seems to be just another roadway (Street View). From the side one can clearly observe the lower level where water once flowed and street cars later crossed (Street View).

Amateur spelunkers sometimes sneak through the abandoned Rochester Subway for urban exploration. The photograph above was taken by one such explorer inside of the Broad Street Bridge tunnel.

Cincinnati, Ohio

Was it common to cover abandoned canals and convert them into subway tunnels? I quickly uncovered two more examples that were mentioned frequently on the Intertubes. Cincinnati was one of those two although critics could easily split hairs and claim it didn’t count. The system was never completed and trains never ran through the intended tunnel.

The city planned to follow the route of the Miami and Erie Canal which had been constructed in 1825. The canal served a useful purpose for a time, connecting the Great Lakes to the Ohio River (and thus the Mississippi River watershed). However it suffered a fate similar to many other canals competing with railroads. It went into decline and eventually failed as a commercial enterprise.

Numerous proposals were floated at the turn of the last century. The Cincinnati Enquirer summarized the situation in Subway legend has never left the station:

Construction started in 1920. Work stopped in 1927. The money had run out. Crews of men, mules and horses had completed 10 of the 16 miles in the system’s loop – including two miles of tunnels – running under downtown and Central Parkway and above ground along what would become the routes of interstates 75 and 71 and the Norwood Lateral.

Tunnels and stations are still down there below the city streets in a remarkable state of preservation including the Race Street Station at Central Parkway & Race St., which would have been the main hub. The Cincinnati Museum offers occasional tours as part of its heritage programs for those who are curious to observe the mysterious tunnels of a stillborn subway firsthand.

Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey probably wins a prize because its a subway that still operates along the original route of an abandoned canal. The stretch from the Military Park Station to Branch Brook Park Station at Heller Parkway (route map) converted the pathway of the Morris Canal to a new mode of transportation when the subway opened in 1935. The entrance to the Military Park Station is displayed in the Street View image, above.

The Morris Canal ran across northern New Jersey for about a century, beginning with its construction in the 1820′s. It was probably noted most for its innovative use of 23 inclined planes in addition to traditional locks in order to move coal barges over a series of hills. I’ve talked about the inclined plane technique previously although not in the context of the Morris Canal. It was pretty impressive.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Newark Light Rail is the only place where one can visit a canal that’s been converted into a subway without any hassles, other than purchasing a ticket to ride the train. As always, I hope the 12MC audience can prove me wrong.

Honorable Mentions

There were a few notable places which did not fit the strict definition of a canal converted to a subway. They deserved to be mentioned for other reasons.

(1) Manhattan made Internet searches difficult because of Canal Street running across the lower tip of the island and accompanying stations on the New York City subway system. Canal Street Stations serve a whole spaghetti tangle of different lines. The canal referenced by Canal Street was essentially a drainage ditch that emptied the Collect Pond, which had become a cesspool by the early 19th Century. Canal Street followed the route of the old canal after the fetid pond was eventually filled-in. The old canal did not become a subway tunnel although it still hid an interesting history.

(2) The Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal forced a railroad to tunnel through a mountainside at Point of Rocks, Maryland. The canal held the right-of-way next to the Potomac River, as recounted by the C&O Canal Bicycle Guide; "After the canal failed, the railroad built a second track in the abandoned canal bed." The second track, however, wasn’t converted into a tunnel although the two tracks looked fascinating in Street View.

(3) The Third Welland Canal in Ontario, part of a system connecting Lakes Ontario and Erie to bypassing Niagara Falls, included a train tunnel that went under a canal. As noted by Wikipedia, "The Grand Trunk Railway Tunnel, also known as the ‘Blue Ghost Tunnel’, is an abandoned railway tunnel located in the community of Thorold, Ontario, which runs under lock 18 of the former third Welland Canal (1887-1932)." (map). Again, an interesting feature, although not exactly what I was hoping to find.

And a belated Thank You to Bill Harris!

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the last person to find out about things. A reader who identified himself as "Jasper" mentioned a $100 hamburger when I put out a call for southeastern Kentucky travel suggestions. I thought he was referring literally to a hundred dollar hamburger. Such a thing does indeed exist so I didn’t rule it out as a possibility. Maybe he had a thing for ground beef wrapped in gold foil, infused with truffles and rolled in caviar, or something. I don’t know. I try not to make value judgments (and generally fail miserably).

Jasper provided a convenient link to explain the hamburger reference as term of art used in general aviation in the United States (perhaps with variations on the theme elsewhere?). A lot of pilots like to pick a random airport a couple or a few hours away, drop-in for a meal, refuel, and then take off again to fly back home. The sheer joy of flying seems to serve as the primary motivation, like someone taking a sports car out into the countryside for a weekend getaway. The $100 price tag refers to the cost of flying to a distant runway for no reason other than wanting to fly to it, and not specifically to any meal that may have been purchased there. It’s a euphemism, or a wink-and-a-nod, or both, even though fuel prices today would make a hundred dollar round-trip flight a bargain.

This sounds like the most awesome idea ever. I’d be all over it if I were a pilot. My county counting abilities would be over the top, too.

I had to check into this further. Various sources mentioned anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 different fly-in restaurants. The 100 Dollar Hamburger is a website for a book with the same name that provides a compendium of such locations although it requires a subscription. A competing site provides a similar service and takes pride in NOT requiring a subscription. Do I detect some bitterness, perhaps?

Jasper said he flew into London-Corbin airport for his $100 hamburger, stopping at The Hangar Restaurant found on-site there. That’s an example of a restaurant AT the airport, probably offered as a service by the airport’s fixed-based operator (FBO). It surprised me how commonly general aviation airports provided restaurants within their facilities, albeit usually in the larger ones. Their clientele extended beyond $100 hamburgers, though. Fly-in restaurants are patronized by airport staff and also by plenty of local residents especially in the smaller towns.

I consulted several websites in search of the best $100 hamburgers. One source included a list compiled in 2011. I can’t vouch for Rick’s Crabby Cowboy in Montauk, NY (map) or the Pik-N-Pig at Gilliam-McConnel airfield in Carthage, NC, although I liked both of their names so I thought I’d give them a mention.

The Hard Eight at Clark Field in Stephenville, Texas, came up on the list and also on several website forums where pilots share information. I figured those mentions qualified the Hard Eight as one of the better $100 hamburger opportunities. It was an example of a restaurant NEAR an airport, and looked to be about a ten minute walk.

Flickr by JMD Pix via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license

I think my favorite location might have to be the Beaumont Hotel in Kansas (map). It’s a Bed & Breakfast inn, it’s a restaurant, AND it has its own dedicated turf runway. The hotel reportedly averaged about 38 aircraft operations per week.

Thank you Jasper for acquainting me with the $100 hamburger concept.

Completely Unrelated

Has anyone managed to snag an invitation for the test version of the new Google Maps? Does anyone know how I can get one? — I did submit a request although I haven’t heard back. What’s a geo-geek gotta do to get a little map love?

I was poking around the CIA World Factbook (doesn’t everyone?) and came across an interesting page that listed "miscellaneous geographic information of significance not included elsewhere." That’s wonderful, I thought, a page of international odds-and-ends that didn’t fit within the book’s prescribed format. I live for moments like that.

It listed little tidbits on just about every nation around the globe. My mind wandered over to the entry for Djibouti:

strategic location near world’s busiest shipping lanes and close to Arabian oilfields; terminus of rail traffic into Ethiopia; mostly wasteland; Lac Assal (Lake Assal) is the lowest point in Africa and the saltiest lake in the world

That’s a lot of miscellany for such a tiny nation, a place slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Massachusetts and populated by fewer than a million residents. I was fascinated by the thought of Lac Assal although seeing a nation described as "mostly wasteland" amused me as well. I’m sure the residents wouldn’t endorse that characterization.

Sources agree that Lac Assal is the lowest point of elevation in Africa. However, there’s a variation in its recorded altitude which seems to center at about -155 metres (-509 feet) give or take a few metres. Assal is a crater lake on the end of a rift valley formed along a geologic fault. The plates split apart, a volcano created a crater, and a depression formed well below sea level. Any water that finds its way into the valley and the crater has no way to escape. Lac Assal doesn’t have an outlet to the sea.

The salinity has become intense due to minerals eroding from the surrounding terrain that washes down into the lake and remains there, while the water evaporates. This is typical of endorheic basins — the same condition exists in Utah’s Great Salt Lake (my visit). The CIA referred to Lac Assal as the "saltiest lake in the world" and that may be true, although Don Juan Pond in Antarctica is allegedly saltier. Lake? Pond? Whatever. Lac Assal is really salty and it’s a source of industry for the area. Huge salt flats are clearly visible on the northwest side of the satellite image.

That’s all interesting, however I’m most fascinated by its proximity to the sea. Maybe 10 kilometres separates Lac Assal from Ghoubbet El Kharab (or Lake or Bay of Ghoubet). Take a close look at the eastern edge of Ghoubbet El Kharab. It is connected to the Gulf of Tadjoura by a narrow passageway, which in turn is connected to the Gulf of Aden. Thus, the surface of Ghoubbet El Kharab would be at sea level. The lowest point in Africa is a mere ten klicks away! One narrow ridge of stone is all that separates Africa’s lowpoint from being inundated by the sea.

In fact, Ghoubbet El Kharab is Lac Assal’s main source of water. Certainly whatever rain falls within the basin, as lacking as that may be, would flow into the lake. Much more water seeps through fissures in the stone wall between Ghoubbet El Kharab and Lac Assal. The stone separating the two features acts as a dam with a crack in it.

Tourists visit Lac Assal generally in winter. The temperature can hit 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit) in the summer, and become truly life threatening. There are other hazards. Djibouti was involved in a civil war between 1991 and 1994 and matériel still remains scattered throughout the countryside. The United States Embassy issued a security message in 2012 after a boy was injured by a land mine nearby (map). So if you go — and I hope someday some of you do — time it right and stick to the roads. And take lots of photos.

Twelve Mile Circle picks a different state for its vacation each summer, and concentrates on an aspect of it intensely. Previous examples have included Alaska, Utah, and Oregon. The ultimate purpose of these holidays is to focus on unusual or oft-overlooked sites within the United States while sprinkling-in a few of the more famous sites as well.

The state selected for the 12MC treatment in 2013 is KENTUCKY, specifically the far southeastern corner.

Diverse factors went into this decision. Key amongst them was my lack of county counting coverage. I’ve driven Interstate 75 through the target area and I’ve also nibbled on its western edge. As a whole, however, my time on the ground there was minimal and my county count has been decidedly lacking.

Southeastern Kentucky also offers the ability to avoid airline travel. I am completely fed-up with the airlines. I am annoyed by overly-abundant airport security hassles, I am disgusted by a complete lack of customer service and I am tired of being nickel-and-dimed with an endless parade of airline fees, each one more outrageous than its predecessors. This summer, 12MC will give the airlines the old One Finger Salute by selecting an automotive destination. It should take about nine hours — a long but manageable single-day drive — which compares favorably to dealing with an airport, flying cross-country, grabbing a rental car, and driving to a hotel.

The target area I’m anticipating includes a 20-ish county area that avoids major cities as represented on my crudely-drawn map: Adair; Barren; Bell; Casey; Clay; Clinton; Cumberland; Edmonson; Green; Hart; Knox; Laurel; Lincoln; McCreary; Metcalfe; Pulaski; Rockcastle; Russell; Taylor; Wayne; Whitley. I won’t hit every one of those counties, and I’ll probably stray outside of those boundaries for the right opportunities (including into Virginia or Tennessee). I’m still early in the research process so it’s in flux. I’m using it focus my concentration for the moment and using it as a starting point, primarily.

The map presents several possibilities even in its embryonic stage. My attention has already been drawn to all things Cumberland (e.g., Cumberland Gap, Cumberland Falls, Lake Cumberland), as well as to the Daniel Boone National Forest and to Mammoth Cave National Park. I visited Mammoth as a kid and I want to return as an adult to see if my pint-sized memories hold true. Plus, my kids love going on cave tours and Mammoth is the king-of-kings for the eastern United States.

My 12MC Complete Index didn’t present an abundance of geo-oddities within the target area, although there are a couple. I’ve shaded the map in yellow and blue to split the target between Central Time and the Eastern Time. We’ll be bouncing between time zones like on the Dust Bowl trip and that always provides a level of amusement. Plus, a time zone anomaly exists within the target area with a chunk of central time farther east than a chunk of eastern time. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to experience the anomaly although I’d probably do it for grins if I happened to be nearby for some other purpose.

Here is the part where I consult with the wise and all-knowing audience. You’ve come through for me several times in the past, suggesting great places to visit that I never would have learned about without your input. Some of those included Capulin Volcano in New Mexico, gas stations in Oregon where I could pump my own gas, Timpanogos Cave National Monument and the ATK Rocket Park in Utah. I am certain that there must be people in the 12MC universe who have either lived in or who have vacationed in southeastern Kentucky.

What "can’t miss" spots have I overlooked? You may see your recommendation mentioned in a 12MC article in July.

I receive an inordinate amount of visitor traffic on my Ferry Maps of the World site. Very few of those hits come from 12MC readers. It’s basically a lot of one-and-done landings from people who never return to the website ever again. Google decided it didn’t like me about a year ago or I was SEO’ed into irrelevance so the traffic has dropped considerably, however, it still doubles or triples the volume of what I see on Twelve Mile Circle on any given day.

The 12MC audience doesn’t have a reason to know or care about this curious circumstance other than it offers a fascinating insight into the random travel thoughts of the larger world. The site answers most visitor questions with ease. It doesn’t deal well with certain esoteric queries. I’ve observed and compiled a list of frequently requested "wishful thinking" ferry lines that do not exist. Some of them have a grain of truth behind them while others are rather more fanciful. The common denominator is that many people believe these routes exist, or perhaps want to hope that they exist, and seek to know how to take advantage of them.

Ferry lines are expensive. I don’t suggest that any of these fictional lines might ever be feasible financially or geographically. My point is that I wish they existed because they sound interesting and because they’d have an immediate set of customers based upon my observation of search patterns.

Galveston – New Orleans Line

A Galveston, Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana ferry has never existed to my knowledge. Nonetheless, this is by far the most commonly requested fictional route. I’ve observed a lot of chatter about the Galveston-Port Bolivar Ferry over the years. It offers a convenient means to bypass Houston traffic for those living on the southern side of the city who wish to travel onward to Interstate 10, heading to New Orleans or beyond. However, the queries I’ve seen are something different. Lots of people seem to want to avoid I-10 altogether by hugging the Gulf of Mexico shoreline in a boat for hundreds of miles.

It could be done. Ships navigate the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River all of the time. Personal watercraft also Cruise the Intracostal Waterway from Galveston to New Orleans albeit with some inconveniences:

At the moment there are no marinas along the 350-mile stretch — all the recreational boating facilities that once existed were wiped out by the series of powerful hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike) that have battered the area. What’s more, there are plenty of obstacles in these waters, including commercial shipping traffic, barges, and off-shore oil-field equipment.

Traffic will need to hit a much higher degree of gridlock I believe, before it reaches sufficient critical mass to justify a ferry.

New Orleans – Key West Line

A ferry line between New Orleans, Louisiana and Key West, Florida comes up less frequently than the Galveston route, although it still makes regular appearances. This one also arrives with a number of variations. Sometimes the embarkation point is farther east than New Orleans while debarkation points range along the entire length of Florida’s Gulf Coast, with Key West the logical extreme.

This one has a grain of truth. Ferry service exists from Fort Myers Beach and San Marco Island to Key West on Key West Express. The route eliminates a 300 mile drive including the entire Overseas Highway that hops atop the Keys (map). That’s often touted as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. However, from repeated experience, I can say with all honesty that it can also be a traffic-clogged multi-hour nightmare. The Overseas Highway provides more than abundant incentive to justify a ferry.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could string Galveston to New Orleans to Key West together into a single line, and cruise the entire northern arc of the Gulf of Mexico? Yes, it would. It’s also never going to happen.

Trans-Caribbean Route

I simply love the thought of a Trans-Caribbean Route. Imagine rolling onto a ferry and skipping from island-to-island, driving off at the paradise of your choice, dawdling as long as you liked before moving on, and having your own automobile with you the whole time. That would be wonderful. It would also be wishful thinking.

The fictional routes I’ve observe tend to vary. Often they start at Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands although more ambitious fantasies begin all the way back in Florida and island-hop the entire length of the eastern Caribbean to South America.

Ferry service in the Caribbean tends to be spotty and subject to frequent change. It’s hard to maintain up-to-date maps of what even exists at any given time. It’s not practical to cobble together a trans-Caribbean route, much less with an automobile. Ferry boats can’t replicate cruise ships in these waters.

Chesapeake Bay Route

Chesapeake Bay car ferries once existed as I’ve noted previously. They became obsolete overnight due to the bridges — amazing engineering marvels really — that were strung across the mouth of the bay and the midpoint. That doesn’t stop people from searching for those old ferry lines, whether from a feeling of nostalgia or an ancient lingering memory. I receive lots of hopeful visitors hitting the site for that purpose.

One can still cross the Chesapeake Bay by ferry today, by sailing from the western to eastern shores via Smith Island in Maryland or Tangier Island in Virginia. These are passenger-only routes (no automobiles) and they are not particularly efficient either, but it’s possible to cross the bay by ferry. I categorize the Chesapeake Bay Route within the "grain of truth" category.

Great Lakes International

Lots of people seem to want to cross between Canada and the United States by ferry. This has much more than a grain of truth. It happens all the time. One can cross from numerous places in British Columbia and Washington in the Pacific Northwest. There are also several ferry crossings between southwestern Ontario and Michigan’s lower peninsula, even for trucks! That’s not what my searchers seemed to want, though. They were seeking routes across the width of the Great Lakes.

And why not? A couple of different ferry lines cross Lake Michigan within the boundaries of the United States (my experience, for example). Also there was a fast ferry that ran across Lake Ontario between Toronto, ON and Rochester, NY. It lasted only three years (2004-2006) before succumbing to financial difficulties. Additionally one can hop across the western side of Lake Erie via Pelee Island, ON (map) and take an automobile.

I’m not sure it’s feasible as a shortcut or as a time-saver, which is what people seem to want, however the service does exist for one of the four Great Lakes shared by Canada and the United States. The other three? Car ferries remain fictional for now.

The East Coaster

Wow. This one is really ambitious. I’m not sure if people seek this alternative because traffic on Interstate 95 is so awful or because they are geographically challenged, or both. The route almost always extends from some point in New York (often Long Island) to a point in South Florida, without any intermediate stops. This wouldn’t be as much a ferry as a voyage. I can’t discount the logic of attempting to avoid the monstrosity that’s known as Interstate 95; I hate it as much as anyone. Nonetheless this represents exterme wishful thinking.

I knew I barely scratched the surface with Quad County Towns, a collection of municipalities that sprawled across the boundaries of four different counties. Examples were surprisingly difficult to find. I turned it over to the Twelve Mile Circle audience who quickly doubled my feeble efforts by appending comments. I hadn’t planned on writing a sequel, however, the crowdsourced contributions warranted further research, mapping and recognition.

Barrington Hills, Illinois

Reader "MWD" offered Barrington Hills in Illinois. The village included territory in Cook, Lake, McHenry and Kane Counties. It also had a fascinating history, begun as a weekend getaway for wealthy Chicagoans who retreated to rural estates for genteel activities such as fox hunting across the open spaces and hobnobbing at the local Country Club. Chicago’s population continued marching westward for the first half of the Twentieth Century so Barrington Hills’ residents formed a village to block encroaching suburbanization. It remains an equestrian community that protects its rural character by strictly enforcing 5-acre minimum zoning.

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, MO seemed obvious once "KCJeff" pointed it out. The city, which is completely independent of its counterpart with the same name on the other side of the state line, crossed into Jackson, Cass, Clay and Platte counties. Kansas City included land rather convincingly within each of the counties except Cass.

I drilled-down into Kansas City’s minor incursion into Cass County and noticed an airport runway. The boundary jogged around the southern edge of the runway. A little sleuthing uncovered this as part of the former Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base that was shut in 1994 due to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) effort. Apparently Kansas City wanted the entirety of the Air Force Base within its boundaries. Annexing a tiny territory in Cass County was the only way to accomplish that. Today the former base is used for a variety of public and private purposes.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

"John Deeth" mentioned Oklahoma City’s borders extending into Oklahoma, Canadian, Cleveland, and Pottawatomie counties. I’ve always loved this location because the state is Oklahoma, the county is Oklahoma and the city is Oklahoma. However I need to amend that now, to recognize that there are parts of Oklahoma City that do not conform to the mantra, those parts in Canadian, Cleveland, and Pottawatomie.

Only the tiniest sliver of Oklahoma City crossed into Pottawatomie County. The Google Street View car burrowed deep into the Pottawatomie nob, revealing the rustic image reproduced above. This is Oklahoma City? Indeed it is. I’ve examined the nob extensively in satellite mode and I cannot determine any intuitive reason for the city to annex this particular plot. Nothing seemed to distinguish it from any of the surrounding terrain.

Bellevue, Ohio

I have bad news for "Greg" — I don’t think that Bellevue, Ohio crossed into Seneca County. We should count this as a near-miss. In all fairness to Greg, he acknowledged that as a distinct possibility. I tried to corroborate the assertion made in Wikipedia ("a city in Erie, Huron, Sandusky and Seneca counties") and could not find any evidence to support Seneca. Even the street map on the City of Bellevue website stopped directly on the Seneca County line but it did not cross it.

I believe the burden of proof is on Wikipedia to cite a proper reference for the four counties claim. There are many organizations and businesses in the area that are called "four county" this-and-that, and the Bellevue Public Library‘s district "is a rarity in Ohio with borders in four counties." Perhaps that’s how the confusion arose, or maybe there was a recent annexation not yet included on the city’s maps. I couldn’t find it.

I’d enjoy adding one more location to the quad towns list so I hope someone can prove me wrong, or at least update Wikipedia if the evidence isn’t forthcoming. Several Wikipedians subscribe to 12MC. Maybe someone can fix that.

Honorable Mentions

"Greg" also mentioned New York City, as did Ariel Dybner. The famous five boroughs are also counties: Brooklyn; Manhattan; Queens, Staten Island and The Bronx. I almost included NYC on the earlier article. It hit the cutting-room floor due to time and space constraints.

New York City is a wonderful anomaly however the counties are effectively non-functional. I talked about this in one of the earliest 12MC articles, Smallest County in the USA, Part 2. An 1898 city-consolidation created a unified New York City under a unique arrangement sometimes described as sui generis ("one that is of its own kind"). The minor, residual county governance that remained after consolidation was undone by a 1989 United States Supreme Court decision, Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris. NYC is a case of the tail wagging to the dog until the tail actually became the dog. I do believe it’s unique and therefore it doesn’t quite fit the category.

Then "Mike Lowe" offered the peculiar history of Broomfield, Colorado. Today it’s a combined city-county, however it was split between Adams, Boulder, Jefferson and Weld Counties until 2001. Broomfield is both one of the smallest and one of the newest counties in the United States. The City and County of Broomfield said:

To help alleviate the problems and confusion in accessing services with the City of Broomfield being the only city in the state to lie in portions of four counties, residents sought relief in a constitutional amendment creating a City and County of Broomfield.

In other words, Broomfield set itself up as a separate county specifically because it was tired of dealing with the peculiarities of sprawling across the boundaries of four separate counties.

Thank you everyone for the contributions!

I mentioned Braselton, Georgia a few months ago in an article called "Bought the Town." In that case the person who bought the town was the actress Kim Basinger who later sold her interest for a stunning financial loss. More interestingly, I noted, the town boundaries included a county quadripoint. Braselton sprawled across Barrow, Gwinnett, Hall and Jackson Counties. The quadripoint itself fell within a creek.

I’ve done a couple of things since that cursory observation. First, I converted the static image from the earlier article into an interactive Google Map. Bear in mind that it’s a pain to draw town and county boundaries on this media so consider all lines approximations designed to prove a point. You’ll see all kinds of anomalies if you drill in. Town boundaries were particularly difficult to render exactly due to the haphazard nature of their annexation histories.

Second, I attempted to find additional examples of towns with boundaries that crossed into four distinct counties. I found only three legitimate instances, including Braselton.

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

I’ve probably been to the Dells at least a half-dozen times over the years. It’s completely tourist-cheezy which I suppose one could view favorably or not so much depending on one’s tolerance for such things. Much of the Dells is over-the-top kitschy although the Ducks are always a good time. I also happened to be nearby in June 2008 right after a huge flood devastated the area. I wrote about Lake Delton’s destruction after the dam blew. The entire 267 acre lake dumped into the Wisconsin River right at the beginning of the tourist season, leaving behind mud, fish and tree stumps.

Nonetheless, until my recent Internet sleuthing, I had no idea that Wisconsin Dells crossed into Adams, Columbia, Juneau and Sauk Counties. The most intensive development fell within Columbia. However, land within the other counties contributed rather significantly too.

The quadripoint fell within the middle of the Wisconsin River.

High Point, North Carolina

High Point, North Carolina was the third example although possibly less remarkable than the other two. Certainly, it’s territory included acreage in Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford and Randolph Counties. However, the vast preponderance of High Point fell within the southwestern corner of Guilford. Land within the other three counties ranged from minor to inconsequential. It was obvious that High Point began as a Guilford County construct and sprawled only recently into the others.

Town annexations in North Carolina became rather contentious in recent years. Organized efforts such as Stop NC Annexation sprang up in opposition. The state’s law authorized forced annexations of unincorporated areas, with acquired residents suddenly hit with municipal taxes and utility hook-up charges against their will. North Carolina changed its laws in 2012 to allow people living in such areas to block annexation attempts with a majority vote.

Walkerton, Indiana

Walkerton, Indiana was a near-miss even though the town itself claimed, "Walkerton is uniquely located where four counties meet." No, Walkerton’s town boundaries remained within a single county, St. Joseph. Also it wouldn’t be "uniquely located" even if borders happened to cross all four because, as noted, there are at least three other instances of such.

What I will concede to Walkerton — and I still find it fascinating — is that the town fell within a little knob of St. Joseph. It’s surrounded on three sides by La Porte, Marshall and Starke Counties. One will hit another county almost immediately after leaving Walkerton heading south, east or west. Walkerton needs to grow just a little bit more to join the other quad county towns.

Postville, Iowa

Postville, Iowa also fell just short of the mark. It straddled the Allamakee and Clayton County lines. The quadripoint formed along with Fayette and Winneshiek Counties can be found less than a mile from town. Postville holds promise if it can grow towards the west.

I’ll include one final honorable mention, the unincorporated Citrus Ridge community (also known as the Four Corners census-designated place) in Florida. It included the quadripoint of Lake, Orange, Osceola and Polk Counties (map). However Citrus Ridge is not a town even though more than 25,000 people lived there during the last census. Citrus Ridge simply needs to incorporate. It has more than enough residents to function as a town and it would make a welcome addition to the quad county list.

It was very difficult to find examples of quad county towns. I know there are more out there. Feel free to mention your discoveries in the comments.

I had fun with Wikipedia’s List of Oldest Companies after I bounced onto it randomly, and of course it included a geographic component. I decided to examine claims for various nations using the list as a starting point.

I think it’s important to stress that these are only claims. References and websites for individual companies often hedge their assertion with qualifiers such as "reputed to be" or "probably" so I wouldn’t insist that any of these are the absolute oldest even though they would certainly qualify as ancient within their particular realms.

Japan – Oldest in the World

The oldest continuously-operated company in the world today is likely (notice the qualifier) Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan hotel which is located at a hot spring in Hayakawa, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. Actually the first several companies on the list are all located in Japan. Japanese firms dominate the entire category. There’s something about Japanese culture that nurtures and protects these mostly modest endeavors for a millennium or more. Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan has been around since the year 705 according to Guinness World Records.

Oddly, Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan captured the longevity title only recently. Kongo Gumi, a Japanese temple builder, ruled the roost until 2006. Kongo Gumi was established and remained under the control of a single family starting in 578 before succumbing to 21st Century economic pressures. Imagine poor Masakazu Kongo, the 40th and final company leader, who failed to pass down what the previous 39 generations of his family had preserved.

Speaking of temple building, I noticed a rather startling swastika symbol south of the Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan hotel. I clicked the tag and dropped the Japanese characters into translation software that identified it as a Buddhist temple. Some basic research confirmed that "on Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the location of a Buddhist temple." It’s perfectly proper in this context albeit it came as a jolt to me because of my westernized point of reference.

Continental Europe

Flickr by marketing deluxe via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) License

An example from continental Europe followed next after a parade of Japanese occurrences. It was the Stiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg, Austria, a restaurant that dated back at least to the year 803 (map). The restaurant claimed that it was "mentioned for the first time by the scholar Alcuin, a follower of Emperor Charlemagne, thus regarded as the oldest restaurant in Europe."

It also interested me because Stiftskeller St. Peter is contained within the confines of St. Peter’s Archabbey (Stiftskeller translates to Abbey Basement). I learned a new word today too: an archabbey is a principal abbey of the Order of Saint Benedict. One can dine within a Benedictine monastery like people have done since the 9th Century.

United Kingdom

Several people from the UK subscribe to the Twelve Mile Circle so I wanted to feature something from the British Islands. The oldest company is believed to be a pub called The Bingley Arms in Bardsey, West Yorkshire. As the pub described it, "The Bingley Arms, or The Priests Inn as it was called hundreds of years ago, has a known history that dates back as far as 953AD when Samson Ellis brewed in the central part of the building. However, evidence suggests that it might even date back to 905AD and was standing before All Hallows Church, just a few yards away, was built in 950AD."

Then it talks about the usual ghost stories and stuff which is typical of just about every website describing ancient places.

United States

No company in the so-called "New World" will compare favorably to Asian or European business longevity. The Native Americans had completely different cultural norms so notions of family businesses passed down through multiple generations had to wait until European settlement. The oldest example was a farm along the James River in Charles City County Virginia — Shirley Plantation — established in 1613. Bear in mind that the first permanent English colony at Jamestown (my visit) didn’t happen until 1607 so Shirley Plantation followed the original landing by a mere six years. That makes the date quite remarkable within its context.

The top tier of ancient establishments in the US were all farms. The oldest non-farm was The Seaside Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine that’s been operated continuously since 1667. They say that, "9th Generation Family Innkeepers make us America’s oldest running family run business." Well, except for the farms, I guess.

Canada and Australia

Canada’s oldest business may be the most well-known of the lot, the Hudson’s Bay company founded in 1670. I decided to show Hudson Bay rather than the company’s headquarters in some generic office tower in Toronto (street view).

Ditto for Australia. I can’t add much visual impact by showing the Brisbane headquarters of the Australian Agricultural Company, founded in 1824. Today they "operate 19 cattle stations, two feedlots and three farms across more than 7.2 million hectares of land across Queensland and the Northern Territory."

I’m not sure the title adequately conveyed what I’m trying to describe, although I can’t think of a better concise title to replace it either. Conceptually, I wanted to know the northernmost and southernmost places in the world and in the United States where one could cross an international border by automobile via a road connected to the larger grid. There are plenty of places farther north where a crossing could be accomplished on foot, perhaps after a long ship voyage or an airline flight, but not by a motorized vehicle on an established road. Those road crossings would be cardinal direction border extremes for the average tourist as opposed to the adventurous explorer. You know, ones that I might actually experience someday.

These were the best examples I could find. I’d love see improvements.

NORTHERNMOST

The absolutely farthest northern road that crossed an international border that I found occurred between Polmak, Norway and Nuorgam, Finland at an astounding 70 degrees north of the equator. By contrast the Arctic Circle is at about 66.56 degrees north. Barrow, Alaska — about as far north as one can get in the United States — is only slightly farther north (71 degrees) and it’s not connected to anything by road, much less internationally. This is crazy far north.

Both nations are part of the Schengen Area so one could cross the border freely. It looked like a former border station had been converted into shops in the Street View image.

NORTHERNMOST UNITED STATES (AND CANADA)

Flickr by jimmywayne via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) License

The United States and Canada share the same northernmost international border crossing at Poker Creek, Alaska / Little Gold Creek, Yukon (map) along the Top of the World Highway. It’s located at about 64 degrees north.

This also demonstrated how few roads crossed this rugged, isolated terrain because the border extended another 380 miles (612 kilometres) due north without a single other road crossing it. This border station closes in the winter so I’m willing to concede that purists may wish to look farther south to the Alaska-Canadian Highway for a more complete example, one that remains open 24X7 all year long (map).

What about the Lower 48 states? I think the northernmost crossing would be the place where the border jogs around to form the Northwest Angle (map). Weekend Roady visited this one in person and I won’t try to improve upon his first-hand description.

SOUTHERNMOST

The record wasn’t clear-cut at the southern end, nor was it quite as extreme. I think it may be a spot on Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego around 54 degrees south, although it’s not even as far south as Ushuaia (featured on 12MC previously), the southernmost town of significance in Argentina. There may also be an error on the Google Map too. Google seems to have issues with borderlines, a condition I’ve observed before. Notice the vertical fence line about 100 metres west of Google’s line. Could that be the true boundary?

I thought perhaps there might be a car ferry between Ushuaia, Argentina and Puerto Williams, Chile. It seemed natural and I’d be willing to bend the "road" rule to accommodate a ferry. It wouldn’t violate the spirit, right? Nonetheless, Wikipedia said of Puerto Williams, "There is no regular link with Argentina and connection to Ushuaia is restricted." Puerto Williams exists primarily for the Chilean navy to assert national sovereignty at the farthest tip of South America. It was once a rather sensitive military area although tourism has begun to creep in.

Another source said it was possible to travel between the two places albeit not very conveniently, "Ushuaia Boating in Ushuaia, Argentina, has regular zodiac service to Isla Navarino October-March or April. The trajectory is boat from Ushuaia to Puerto Navarino (40 minutes, immigration), then minibus to Puerto Williams." However that wouldn’t qualify as an automobile crossing by any stretch of the imagination so I’m not going to count it.

SOUTHERNMOST SOUTHMOST USA

Eyeball estimates led me to believe that the southernmost border crossing in the United States would be found at Brownsville, Texas where it provided access to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, México. That was located at about 25.9 degrees north. A whole bunch of the world can be found farther south than that.

That’s not what I enjoyed the most, though. I was amused by Southmost Boulevard. That’s southmost not southernmost. A shorter word with the same meaning. It sounded a little odd. Maybe I could get used to it?