In a deep review of the online legal descriptions of Iowa highways, I’ve noticed some quirks in the conventions.\u00a0A road will often connect or start at\/with “an unnamed street”, but in each town that street clearly has a name. Older route descriptions have more information than newer ones. The weird thing is when streets are named, but according to modern maps, that street name does not exist.<\/p>\n
One mass renaming that’s known for sure is Denison, which got rid of all its names for numbered streets and avenues.<\/p>\n
But there are other cases. Take Earlham, for example. In 1960, the state set IA 232<\/a> “Commencing at the intersection of\u00a0Chestnut Street\u00a0and\u00a0Iowa Street; thence northerly on\u00a0Chestnut Street\u00a0to the north corporation line.”\u00a0But there is no Iowa Street in Earlham<\/a> (PDF). For that matter, there’s no Chestnut Street, but Chestnut Avenue<\/em>.<\/p>\n The same thing happens in Sully. From at least May 5, 1942, to June 18, 1975, IA 225 went downtown<\/a>.<\/p>\n Beginning on\u00a0Fourth Street<\/a>\u00a0at the west line of\u00a0Main Street; thence east on\u00a0Fourth Street\u00a0to\u00a0Park Street; thence north on\u00a0Park Street\u00a0to\u00a0First Street; thence east on First Street\u00a0to the east corporation line.<\/em><\/p>\n But today Sully doesn’t have a Main Street<\/a>, or a Park Street. All the east-west roads are numbered streets and the north-south roads are numbered avenues.<\/p>\n This certainly makes it more difficult to ascertain where those old endpoints were, even in a place with as few streets as Alta Vista<\/a>, where \u00a0the end of IA 289<\/a>\u00a0in 1980 was “739 feet south of the intersection of Main Street and Water Street” and neither Main Street nor Water Street<\/em> are on the map today.<\/p>\n So, what gives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a deep review of the online legal descriptions of Iowa highways, I’ve noticed some quirks in the conventions.\u00a0A road will often connect or start at\/with “an unnamed street”, but in each town that street clearly has a name. Older … Continue reading