Penfield, NY, contains both a Five Mile Point Road and a Nine Mile Point Road.
They are not four miles apart. You can’t even say what the zero point is. Turns out that they were independently named from different base points in the dim, distant past and the names survived into the present. Nine Mile Point was “so called because at the end of the road at Lake Ontario there was once a large elm tree visible to sailors who knew it was about nine miles from the port of Charlotte.” I can’t find Five Mile Point’s origin online, but I’ve seen it in some local history books.
Naming is not logical, and people mess up even the logical bits to make them less impersonal.
New York State is less logical because European settlement was less logical. However, in most of the Midwest (including Michigan, which this thread was originally about), the surveyors arrived before the settlers, and established a grid of one-mile squares, which still exist today, and which are really obvious as you fly over. So in many counties in the Midwest you’ll find road names like “County Road 500 North” (“CR 500 N” on the road signs), meaning that the road goes from east to west, and is 5 miles north of the county courthouse. And the big cities, such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Columbus OH, are in a rectangular grid with a well-known zero point in the centre of the city.
Yes, this was a result of gridding the land in the Northwest Territory to make it easier for selling it. The surveys started in Ohio and moved west. Fascinating process.
We have a series of these mileposts in Denver. Specifically there is a 4 mile and a 9 mile (and I believe others). My understanding is that these were stage stops that many miles from downtown Denver (and, I was told at one time that distance signs on highways is the distance to the central Post Office in the subject town.).
These, however, sound a bit different from the ones in Michigan.
The way it was explained to me Michigan is only coincidentally E-W. The story I heard goes:
Back when Woodward was laying out the city after the fire he was inspired by the designed Cities like Washington. So he decided to lay it out on a hex grid. Jefferson was the first baseline road set parallel and close to the River where the city was. Then Woodward(which was renamed for him later , I don’t remember what he called it ) was set perpendicular to it heading away from the river. Michigan and Gratiot headed out from Woodward at the correct angles to start making the hex pods, and Michigan happened to be E-W.
Not sure about that, but there is a pattern if you look downtown.
Map of downtown Detroit. If you notice, the “main” roads (Fort St., Michigan Ave., Grand River, Woodward, Gratiot, and Jefferson) all kind of fan out from a point. Then, the line where Michigan Ave. runs west and meets Ford Rd. is “0 mile;” Warren Ave. is “1 mile,” Joy Rd. is “2 Mile,” Plymouth Rd. is “3 mile,” Schoolcraft Rd is “4 Mile,” Fenkell Ave. is “5 Mile,” and McNichols Rd. is “6 mile.” North of that they’re mostly called “x Mile Rd.” but it depends on where you are. 7 Mile Rd. is called Moross Rd. in the Pointes, 15 Mile becomes Maple Rd. in Oakland County (actually most of the mile roads north of 14 get renamed in Oakland Co.)
Sixteen Mile is an example. It’s Big Beaver (I-75 exit 69!) in Oakland County. Even in Macomb county it’s one of the renamed Mile Roads: Metro(politan) Parkway. In most everyday speech, we simply call it 16-Mile. Note: I live near 16-Mile and M-97 when not in China. Further note: I don’t really call it M-97, but for some reason it’s easier to remember the highway number than whether or not Groesbeck has one or two S’s.
To nitpick, it isn’t so much used to layout roads as it is townships. Extend 8 Mile across the state and you have the northern boundary of the T1S townships and the southern boundary of the T1N townships. The Michigan Meridian is the dividing line between the R1W and R1E townships, and lies east of Lansing and more or less follows Meridian Road.
Another nitpick is that Baseline Road and 8 Mile Road actually separate at the western edge of Oakland/Wayne counties at Novi Road (right next to where I live). Not sure if they re-merge further out and if this affects township lines. Thus a little known local factoid is that you can live two blocks south of 8 mile in Northville and still not be a Wayne County resident (it’s Oakland County) because the county line is defined by Baseline, not 8 Mile. I’ve won a few beers with this and it drives some people crazy; they insist that this cannot be so because they have been drilled all of their lives that 8 Mile is the dividing line between the two counties.
In a related story, there is a highway in North Georgia (575) that used to number exits numerically, without regard to mileage from a given point (the start of 575 off of 75). That is until they changed it. Exits are now numbered by mileage out from 75.
One road was named after the exit it served, using the old rule.
Thus, the exit for “Sixes Road” is now exit 11.
I grew up in that area. 8 Mile takes a curve to avoid a hilly glacial area, starting at Griswold Road. There’s a kettle hill at the western end of the curve that is the highest point in Wayne County. I’ve been able to spot the water tower on top of it, which is almost directly on the baseline, from over 10 miles away. The road curves back south and rejoins the baseline a little over a mile west of the original jog, at Taft road.
The split doesn’t affect township lines; the majority of the deviation is contained in Northville city limits, which is partly north of 8 Mile there anyway. There’s one little corner north of Baseline but south of 8 Mile that isn’t Northville but City of Novi.
Cool, another bar bet factoid! I did not know that the mansion in that little corner south of eight mile was part of Novi. Drive by it almost every day; often wondered who the hell lived there as it is a strange location for an relatively expensive (Zillow says $2.7M) home bordering right on the south side 8 Mile. Perhaps it used to be a trailer court; did Eminem grow up there?
Okay… 16 Mile/ Big Beaver / Exit 69. Having worked for the wonderful City of Troy for many many years, I have had the chance to talk to the peeps at the museum here. Big Beaver was called Big Beaver well before I-75 came through (Troy in 1916). The fact that it lines up with Exit 69 is just a happy accident… (: … (excepting for the mysterious left turn right at Rochester road that would have made it Exit 67)…
I could get REALLY detailed and bore everyone to a comatose stage.
The US standards of surveying land are divided into two categories: Colonial Land States, and those surveyed under the Public Land Survey System. Do some research on PLSS, it’s fascinating!
ALL PLSS land is measured by a grid established by the Government Land Office (now BLM) in Washington DC. A set of baselines (E-W) and meridians (N-S) were established and monumented, and they are identified by the meridian names. From these baselines and meridians, township lines (E-W) and range lines (N-S) were measured, creating a grid approximately 6 miles on each side. These “blocks” are called townships, as noted upthrerad.
The townships were further broken down into sections, 36 sections per township being the norm.
As you might expect, there are some oddballs in the group.
When you hear of a farm being 40 acres, 160 acres, 640 acres, these were portions of a section. Settlement of the Western states was encouraged by granting land identified through PLSS.
The later construction of roads on the section lines followed, and thus we have the “Mile” roads today, testament to the early history of the US.
