In Texas, there was no systematic way of naming rural roads. Before Rural Free Delivery (“Mayberry, RFD” anyone?) came slowly into existence and spread during the early 20th century, farmers and ranchers had to go into town and pick up their mail or pay a private courier to bring it to them. With RFD, a carrier would be assigned a route and would deliver the mail in the country. My grandmother was one of these for about 40 years. You wore no uniform and drove your own vehicle. You had to memorize the route and who lived where because there were no street signs once you left the state highway. It was the road to Key or Midway or Hatch or Brown or Sparenburg. The houses didn’t have numbers. Friends of my grandparents lived in a house known as the Peterson Place because it was built by the Petersons in 1952. They sold it to the Howards in 1955, but it’s still known as the Peterson Place.
Anyway that cluster of paved and unpaved roads was known as a route. So the Smiths, Jones, and Browns might live on different roads 15 miles apart, but their addresses were all Route B. Where my Aunt lived, the addresses were Star Route 1,2, or 3. No rhyme or reason except that the carrier knew everyone.
Finally, 911 services became available in those areas about 10-15 years ago and it was decided that a uniform renaming of roads should be undertaken. So all the houses got numbers (well, the mailboxes did anyway) and the roads with houses got named County Road 14,15, 16 or A, B, C etc depending on orientation.
As for the job requiring a technician, I offer this google earth satellite photo of the area west of Post, Texas. Which of these would you designate a road?
And that’s in west Texas where they laid out things in straight lines. Bandera is in the Hill Country where roads meander according to terrain. Old ranch road meets new retirement development.
I lived for 10 years in a rural area of San Luis Obispo County (Ca) where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play. The rural roads all had names, but there was a problem with the house numbering.
It seems that the Post Office assigned addresses to all the houses, and also the County assigned addresses to all the houses. (But apparently only when someone called them and asked to be assigned an address.) The County and Post Office allegedly coordinated their efforts. But in fact, they apparently never talked to each other.
Thus, there were two disjoint numbering systems along the road I lived on. Some houses had numbers from one system, some had numbers from the other, and some had both.
Our 911 center is involved in the review of proposed street names. We have the luxury of having a small enough jurisdiction that we can insist on no duplication of a name using alternate road name types. (if Oak St exists then we would not permit a proposed use of Oak Ln).
Further we attempt to avoid sound-alike names. That can extend to denying road name proposals where the requested name sounds like a major landmark, apartment complex, etc… (There is already an apartment complex called Moon Bay, so we would not permit a new road to be named Moon Bay Road nor named something that sound too much like it such as Loon Way.)
And developers do get pissed. One developer was denied the right to name a road in his development after his mother because the proposed name was too similar to a pre-existing road.
But it is serious business. In larger jurisdictions critical emergency response has been sent to the wrong location due to confusion caused by duplication of road names in nearby communities.
I know. These fancy kids today have several TV stations, video games and now fancy street addresses to make people carry stuff right to their door. I grew up right on the Louisiana/Texas border and we didn’t have a street address at all because we had a lot of land and our roads were private. My address growing up was literally just PO Box 9, TinyTown, LA the same way it had been since the turn of the 20th century when my great grandfather got the family PO box. We got our mail from the Post Office. 911 wasn’t a concern. We just dialed the 4 digits to get the police or fire station just like we world anybody else in town and told them we needed help. They already knew where we lived. This wasn’t 1930 BTW, it was that way until I graduated high school in 1991 and probably still is for all I know.
I lived in a farm house in Vermont in 1997 that had absolutely no address address at all, road name or even telephone. It was absolutely glorious but I quickly realized that if anything bad happened when I was there alone, it was basically game over.
I think an example of a rural address is warranted.
One I just pulled out the the phone book is: 45402 207th St. This address is about a mile north of the small town I live in. Before rural addressing, it probably would have been something like Rural Route 10, Box 30 as mentioned above.
Basically the object of rural addressing is to standardize the addresses on a grid to make emergency calls easier.
there also may have been a fire number like SMALLTOWN 482.
the postal addresses would be of little use to emergency services. each motorized carrier had a Route number and that route could be on dozens of roads served by that post office.
the fire numbers were assigned by the fire service for that area. law, fire and ambulance would all have maps of that.
I’ll say. Sometimes they go over our heads to the County Commisioners.
Sometimes part of the problem is the developers put the cart before the horse and start the marketing process before a subdivision name is approved. Opps.
It’s really going to depend on how your jurisdiction handles it. But no tests or anything that I know of. And depending on the size of say, your County, it’s more than likely sort of a side job of a Planner or GIS tech.
Unless, you are readressing the whole county, then, THAT is a full time job that could last some time.
You are probably correct. At least the street part would be used for emergency services. Each house has a little blue sign in front of it with a number that is probably the fire number. I’ll have to see on the way home if those match the postal house number. But probably not.
http://newmexico.jobing.com/rural-addressing-technician-i/job/1968756
According to this job description, you need a pretty good working knowledge of GIS software. Now this part is just a guess, but since the 911 system in rural areas is encouraged with friendly loans and grants from the USDA, I imagine that this job is extended to people who already work for the county and have an interest in GIS or planning. They are sent to Lubbock, Dallas, Austin, or Houston for a few lessons in GIS software once or twice a year. Then they are given the title of Rural Addressing Technician and part of the federal money can be applied to their salaries.
It’s not just rural areas that have that problem, either. Back in the late 70s my hometown decided to standardize street addresses for emergency services. Noble idea, but it meant that roughly 40% of the street addresses in town changed. For a city of 35,000 people, that’s a lot. Not to mention the cost of reprinting address labels, forms, business cards, etc. I don’t know what they paid the people who reassigned addresses, but it wasn’t enough. Those people got reamed by just about everybody in town, just for doing their job.
Growing up our address started “Route 2”. I think we got a street/road number before 911; when 911 the half mile long dirt road that was our driveway had to be named and paved.