Does Utah have street names, just about every address from Utah that I’ve seen were something like #989 South. (this is only an example not a real add.)
I seem to recall street names in Ogden.
But I think Salt Lake City itself has some weird grid plan, where everything addy is “237 South, 19 East.”
Or was it the other way around? I just remember it messing with my poor little head.
FWIW, the major streets in Lancaster, CA are one mile apart and start with Avenue A, which runs east-west and is at the northern border of L.A. County. Intermediate streets are like West Avenue K-13 and East Avenue J-10. North-south streets are numbered so: 10th Street West, 20th Street West, etc., which are one mile apart, with intermediate streets being numbered between the major streets (12 St. W, e.g.). Between 10th Street West and 10th Street East is a street called Division.
When I lived there in the 70s and 80s, there were some streets with “real” names, but most were on the grid system. After the building boom of the 80s the new streets became more “normal”.
Some streets in Salt Lake City have names, but SLC and its suburbs (and other Urtah towns) are laid out in a VERY exact square pattern. My address used to be 740 East 300 South – from which you could tell that it was 7.4 blocks to the east and 3 blocks to the south of Temple Square (the Center of the Universe). You would even know that it is on the South side of the street. SLC blocks are the same dimensions north-south and east-west, with exactly 100 numbers to the block. They thus make a lot more sense than Manhattan blocks, which are a lot wider east-west than north-south. Manhattan blocks have approximately 100 numbers per block east-west, but not north-south. (Eight blocks north-south in NYC is a mile)
The pattern in SLC breaks down in “The Avenues”, the elevated section to the northeast of town, but the blocks are still square there. The pattern of street numbering continues through the suburbs in the valley to the south – so Sandy, Utah has street numbering consistent with Salt Lake City.
The pattern isn’t that odd. A lot of cities in the Midwest and West – where they had a lot of space to play with, and a clean slate – have a very regular grid of streets that go by number, with very regular relationships. Look at Lincolm, Nebraska.
Of course, if you DON’T like that kind of thing, come to Boston, where I now live. Except for relatively new places like Back Bay or East Cambridge the streets don’t meet at right angles, they’re not numbered, and the relationships are eccentric. Street names can change in the middle of the block, and the numbering changes completely when you cross town boundaries. To make things really interesting they only put up ONE sign at intersections – so you know which street you’re on, or which one you’ve crossed, but not both. It makes me long for Utah.
Cal, I used to live right around the corner from you! I lived at 6 something (I think it was 630…I can’t remember exactly) East 200 South!
FTR, I loved the addressing system in SLC. You never needed directions to parties. If you knew their address, you were set.
its the same in Provo, and surronding towns. I used to live at 275 n 300 e payson utah, if I remember correctly. I lived there for about a decade one year, and I aint never going back.
Utah towns do have some streets which are named. For instance, in the greater Salt Lake area there is a “Redwood Road,” a “Foothill Blvd.,” and of course, North and South Temple, Main Street, and State Street. In Provo, where I live, my street has both a number AND a name. I can use either one and the locals would know where I was in relation to the center of town.
Up in the “Indian Hills” area of Provo, each street has an Indian name like “Cherokee Lane” or “Apache Drive.” Makes it very hard to find addresses up there if you don’t know the layout. And the trend in Provo is to name formerly numbered streets with a more descriptive name. Thus, “Freedom Blvd.” is also “200 West,” and “Bulldog Blvd.” is also “1230 North.” But it’s true that most Utah streets are numbers based on their relative position to the center of town. Makes most addresses easy to find.
Aye, or Phoenix, Arizona. North-south, it’s named streets, but east-west has a very orderly progression out from Central Avenue: X avenue/drive = west of Central, X street/place = east of Central, with major arteries coming exactly 8 numbers apart. This extends out through most of the suburbs, with the exception of a few backward ones like Mesa.
What’s really bizarre is that some places way, way out in the desert have adopted the Phoenix numbering system as well, leading to streets like 571st Avenue, which by my math is over 70 miles away from the center of town, and halfway to the California border.
Seattle and environs have the same sort of system, only worse. Most (but not all) streets are not only numbered but assigned a geographic affix like NE, S, SW, etc. And generally the “Streets” run east-west and the “Avenues” run north-south. When I lived in Maple Valley my address was 21722 SE 266th St. – about halfway between 217th and 218th Aves. SE. And you have to put the geographic affix in the right place. For streets it comes before the number (SE 266th St) and for avenues it comes after (217th Ave SE).
The biggest problem is that the numbers are inconsistent – 212th Ave SE in Renton is 64th Ave N in Kent – same street, different numbers. Within any particular locale it works pretty well but problems arise when there are overlaps. Sometimes one system wins, sometimes another, and sometimes they revert to a more or less global third system.
When they DO name the streets it is even worse. State Route 516 (which runs near my house) is Kent-Kangley Road (or SE 272nd) in my neighborhood, then Smith Street (SE 256th) a few blocks west, then it turns into Meeker Street (which also has a number but I don’t know what it is). Seven names for the same street within about 20 blocks.
I’ve lived in Utah and I’ve lived in Seattle. Utah has problems, but Seattle is worse, IMHO.
If there were parties.
C3:
630 East and 200 South? IIRC that would have put you right next door to the upermarket (that later became an OSCO Drug).