This question is for people living out in Elk County or any other county where townships and sections rule property descriptions. Farmhouses on Junebug, Limestone, Turkey, and other roads now have street or road addresses.
How was your road address determined?
Within the city limits, lots are used as basis for addresses. What is the basis "out there?"
Waldo,
I can certainly address this issue because I was one of the several who made the decisions how the addresses came about. However; I need to go to bed, so I will answer this tomorrow. Have a good night.
For some reason our street addresses in Moline on the east/west streets flipped from being even on the north side of the street and odd on the south side of the street to being odd on the north side and even on the south side when the streets were east of Main street. I guess this was so people could know that you lived either in East Moline or West Moline. When 911 came through every body east of Main street on the east/west streets had to change their house numbers. This caused a lot of confusion, I was even denied a credit card because of my invalid address, (lol)! I had to prove that I still live here. Even the tax roles had to be changed, we still have a few repercussions from that but I can see the wisdom in the change.
I was living in Greenwood county when E911 was implimented. Lived at route 1 Box 51 for 30 years and all at once lived at 1699 10th street. Had to do address changes and explain to everyone that NO I HAVE NOT MOVED, just have a different address. :-\
I know our situation here isn't quite the same, but downstate is very rural and for 911 (and the poor UPS driver) we used the standardized rural numbering system that assigns a number to about every 500 ft.(1/10 of a mile) so wherever your driveway or farm lane meets the road, that's the number. (The system that numbers telephone poles works in a similar way.) Every road had to have a name, so people had to make up their minds and agree on it. So box 16, rr#33 turned into 21 Georgetown Road. It took about 5 years to do it all. Also, many names sound very similar on the radio. Kenmar and Kenmark. The numbers help. We also have "enhanced 911", so for residential addresses, the address from which the 911 call is made pops up on the dispatcher's computer screen. It's great for helping children or very ill people.
The naming system in Elk County was devised to aid people in locating the roads. Starting at the southwest corner of the county, the north-south roads were given numbers and the east-west roads were given names in alphabetical order. Anyone that knows their numbers and alphabet can tell just about where in the county a certain road is located. This is a simple solution except that renaming some roads from what they have always been called didn't set good with local residents. One road we used consistently was the Cresco Cemetery Road. Beginning with a C would have put it in the south part of the county, but it is in fact close to the north boundary. It was renamed Rock Road which also suited it as it is mostly various sizes of rock, from crushed rock to boulders. The Cresco Cemetery Road is still called just that and the sign that was put up there used both Cresco Cemetery Road and Rock Road along with the Highway 99 designation. I don't know if Cresco Cemetery is still on the sign or not since the highway was rebuilt. Janet can and will tell you a lot more about this when she has the time to.
Now, another situation. When we moved to Sedgwick County, we lived 2 miles south of Haysville but our address was Wichita. Some years later someone decided that the area south of Haysville should have a Haysville address so our address changed from Wichita to Haysville and we hadn't moved. We lived there for 26 years.
Cresco Road, Busby Road, S Curve, Suicide Curve, Peebles Hill, Lake Road, all gone :'(
Very Interesting.
The most complaints I have heard is that Busby Road is not Busby Road.
I was going to ask Diane also, but she already replied.
It will be interesting to see what Janet says about the addresses. If she was one of several who made the decision that might mean there is no uniform method.
Speaking of UPS, as Diane did, I noticed someone in east Elk County has a colorful rather large well done sign at a lonely intersection somewhere north of Longton. The sign has big UPS lettering along with an address and an arrow pointing up a desolate road in their direction. If those folks made the sign themselves, that sure was good work.
I had to smile but it looks as though UPS was getting turned around even with the new numbering.
If you are not a native, bred and born and raised in Elk County, the meandering roads will certainly mess you up. One road, for instance, with no intersections, can go for miles in every direction before reaching another road. You feel as if you are going in circles. Which reminds me that one time when Janet was dating a young man from southwestern Elk county, he took her out to the meandering roads northwest of Howard and tried to get her lost. Didn't work. He didn't know that was Grandparent territory and she had many times been on all those roads. Regardless, you need to be prepared like a boy scout if you want to explore the wilderness of Elk County roads.
We went modern in Greenwood County with the great 911. Now I can get Butler County or some other seaport in an emergency. Got to love it. Now in the rest of the U.S. I would have a odd number for my address as I live on the south side of the road. Not here!!!!! I live at 878.
As far as UPS goes- Had a package sent to Piedmont Cafe. Had to have a street address before we got these City addresses. I'm thinking if you can't find the Cafe once you get to Piedmont maybe you shouldn't have a drivers license. ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
My sister lives in Cowley County and had to change everything with the 911 addressing. Got all of her things changed to the new address only to have them tell her they made a mistake. YEP, she got do to it all over again. As they say "That's life"
When establishing 911 addresses, governments work with the United States Post Office. They have regulations and they were extremely helpful when it came to doing this. We also used information from FEMA, I think. I know there was a federal agency involved or at least their literature.
We chose to go with north/south roads being numbers and east/west roads being names. We were going to use the alphabet, but Greenwood County was doing that and we didn't want to get the two counties confused. We were also going to use counties of Kansas in alpha order, but Wilson County and Neosho County were using those and their radio system was close to ours, so we nixed that.
About 5 of us sat in the appraiser's office one day and came up with the names for our roads. I wanted to use names of things that would reflect Elk County. We started naming the south road that we share with Chautauqua County, the EK/CQ Road. The road we share with Greenwood County was named EK/GW Road. Then the first road north of EK/CQ Road started our alphabet. Angus, Antler, Blackjack, Cyclone, Dove, Evergreen, Flint, Grain, Harvest, Indigo, Junebug, Killdeer, Limestone, Mule, Native, Oxen, Pioneer, Quail, Rock, Settler, Turkey, and then the county line road at the north end is EK/GW Road.
We tried to use words that sounded clear on the radio. That was my main focus was to make it clear and easy for citizens and law enforcement/emergency services alike.
The north/south roads were numbers starting with Road 1 at the Cowley County Line and ending with Road 32 at the Montgomery County line.
We used Road 1, 2, 3, etc., and tried to match up to Chautauqua County as their north/South roads are Road 1, 2, 3, etc. However; our roads don't match up because Chautauqua County started with Road 1 at the southwest corner and that name stayed with that road even though the road would travel 5 miles to the northeast before it became Elk County. We chose to change the road number to the next one when the road would move more than 1/2 mile. For instance, at Elk Falls, what we call the River Road to come north to Howard is Road 19, but as it travels north and west it turns into Road 18 before it goes by Gene Perkins house. When you go by Perkins house, the road goes west and is Killdeer until it reaches the highway. While this road is meandering around, if it goes east/west for at least 1/2 mile it takes on the name of the east/west road for that area.
The numbered roads were started at the southwest corner and went east across the county and the named roads started at the south county line and went north through the alphabet.
Now, how did we get the numbers? We chose to 4 digits in the number, so that if Elk County grew, the 911 numbering could grow also. We did like Diane says their system is, every 1/10th of a mile the number changes. Where ever your driveway was is what your number would be. The cartographer for the county, Connie Hey, measured on her maps that pinpointed what your number would be. If she questioned her measuring, she would send Kenny Hughes, field appraiser, out and he would double check it for her. Connie Hey did a wonderful job with the 911 addressing and she is the one who gives out the addresses when someone wants to move in a new home or whatever.
Now, how did we get the 911 system changed from the old post office addresses? We worked with the Wichita post office who has charge of our little post offices out here. I put the addresses in a database and e-mailed them to Wichita and they took it from there. When they were ready, I then mailed letters to every address in the county and told them what their new address would be. A date was given to them when the post office would no longer accept their old addresses as their mailing address. I can't remember how long they were given, but it seemed to me that it went really smooth. Our postmasters and carriers worked very hard with us to make this changeover work and I truly think we did a good job.
We had the road department put up the sign posts after I called Dig Safe about once a week. Then, we, the sheriff's office, went out and put most of the signs up. When it got to where we could not do it, the county hired a couple to finish the job and they did great work.
Now, the unfortunate thing that is going on now is when a sign disappears or is criminally damaged, the road department does not repair that sign. Out in the western part of the county, there are several signs missing and my husband has talked to the road supervisor about gettng them put back up. That was this spring. The signs are still not up and his oil field contractors have a heck of a time finding the oil leases that they need to go to. I think he will be paying another visit soon, but right now the county is trying to redo roads from the heavy flooding that we had.
I hope, Waldo, that this explains how we did our system and it is a system that works for Elk County. We also have Enhanced 911 which is a blessing for the dispatchers and emergency services. I wouldn't have it any other way now.
Good show, Janet, thank you for the information.
You will have to excuse people like me who are always wondering about something or other.
I was going to mention those missing road signs. South of Howard, Junebug seems to be one that is popular. I have also seen intersections that did not even have poles.
Very informative, Janet. Thanks!
Thanks to all! It is amazing how much information we exchange about one another but very little about our surroundings, and how they got that way!
I am not too well versed in the country roads and always knew them as something else because of incidents that happened on them long ago. My dad (retired game warden) told many a story about some of the roads back in the day. However, I can appreciate the hard work that went into naming them and keeping everything straight in our county as to not confuse from one county line to the next.
However, I still would like to see a sign north of Howard and south of Howard as you are entering our city limits that says, "Howard----next 7 exits". I just think that would enlighten so many people in our area and beyond. What'd'ya think, Janet?
Janet,
Thank you for that very informative article. I remember the first time I came to Elk Co after the new signs went up and while I quickly figured out the alphabetical/numerical aspect, I did not understand why exceptions weren't made for the Busby Road etc.
Now it makes perfect sense. GOOD JOB.
speaking of UPS, Sally, got to tell this story. I was ordering something from somewhere, don't remember now, but the gal on the other end needed a "street address" because it would be coming via UPS and they needed an address to deliver to and I told her I didn't have one. She wouldn't except route 1 box 51 and it was pre-E911. I told her didn't make any difference what my address was, cause the UPS driver knew where I worked and if I wasn't home he'd just bring it to the co-op. This she didn't understand either. I had to explain to her that Severy was, and this is just what I told her, a town of 350 population and that included people, cats, dogs, and Jimmy Erwin's goats. She accepted my then address.
What is the address for Buttermiilk HILL? Or is it still there? ;D :D :-* :-* :-*
Where is Buttermilk Hill? My husband used to speak of it but I don't remember where, now.
The history of Buttermilk Hill would be interesting to know. I hope someone posts that info.
Buttermilk Hill doesn't have an address. Buttermilk Hill is south of Howard about 1.5 miles. When you go south on K-99, you turn off the highway at Junebug, but continue south on the numbered road. I don't know the number of the road. You go south up the hill and stop. That's Buttermilk Hill. Why is it called that? I don't know.
Dad always said that Buttermilk Hill got its name from my grandparent's dairy (John and Ida Hunter). We always milked on our hill, so I don't understand how the name was applied to the other hill rather than to ours.
We had the dairy from 1930 until about 1974 when we shut it down. Our farm was already a dairy when we moved to it, so the name may be older than that.
There was a dairy barn built on the other hill by the Gilbert family after WW2, but I don't think there was commercial milking on Buttermilk Hill prior to that.
Marty,
What is the road number that goes south of Junebug off of K-99?
Where could one get a map of Elk County that showed all of these roads?
Oh Janet, Marty says "this is Elk County, we don't need no stinkin' road signs." Ha! From personal experience, I think I'm lucky he knows what street we live on in town. Directions I get from him are always along the lines of: "you know, over close to Lonnie's old garage" (which is not there anymore) or "on your way to the marble orchard, that house that had a big cherry tree" (the tree is gone now too)
Actually, he said he'd look tomorrow, but I know for a fact that the road sign is MIA and has been for a long time; so unless the one at the south end of the mile section is still there, he still won't know. I think I remember it was 15 or 17, but not sure about that either.
An Elk County road map is available for download at http://www.ksdot.org/burtransplan/maps/Mapscounties.asp
It is an official Kansas Dept of Transportation map but unfortunately is dated 1992 and does not have the new designations.
Someone in Elk County government probably notified the state of the new road designations and they will be on the new road map, whenever that might be.
I had a copy of the county rural directory that came out in 2004 with the new road names. My husband gave it to some oil puller guys, so they would have a map with the road names. I think the road that has Buttermilk Hill on it is Road 15.
The majority of my mail route is in Greenwood County, though I do have several patrons in Elk County. The 911 addressing system became effective in the Severy area – in both Greenwood and Elk counties – on January 1, 2003. Residences and businesses in the rural area were assigned new mailing addresses based on their physical location. Customers were urged to begin using their appropriate new physical addresses on all correspondence, as the box numbering system that had been in use on the route for more than ninety-seven years was no longer in effect.
The Severy Post Office worked with both Greenwood and Elk County during, and after, the implementation. Because our postmaster lived in Independence and was not familiar with the area the route covered, I was the one that looked for mistakes that may have been made. Greenwood County made many mistakes. The man in charge of the Greenwood County 911 implementation gave 911 addresses to all the residents within the City of Climax. He found out pretty quick that he could not do this. There were also address numbers out of sequence. And, one man who lived on a dead end road on 50th Street was given an address of R Road, but you could not access his house via R Road (unless you drove a mile through pastures). There were other mistakes made, some of which still remain. There are at least two road signs that are still up that are incorrect, as well.
I must say that Janet Harrington did a fantastic job for Elk County!! We never did find one wrong address given out for Elk County (and I looked hard, so a customer would not find out later he had to change his address yet again). We only had one complaint from an Elk County customer - a man who lived on the corner of Turkey Road and Road 18. He had two drives into his home - one on Turkey Road and one on Road 18. He was given a Turkey Road address, and he wanted a Road 18 address. In my opinion his "Turkey" address was very fitting because he was a turkey deluxe. Another fitting address given out in Elk County was for the Flint Oak Hunting Preserve, that has a "Quail Road" address.
Thank you, post lady. Connie Hey and I worked very, very hard to make sure we didn't have any problems. In regards to the Turkey Road, I would have rather had my address be Turkey Road then some Road # that I may not remember.
Quail road that goes by Flint Oak was actually named with them in mind. It would have been better if that road would have been a P and we would have used the word Pheasant, but, alas; it wasn't to be.
Again, thank you for the compliment.
We..( the Posse) were sure glad when the roads were all done and named. :-\
Ta Ta was really grumpy during that time .. but after she got done with that ..
then she was back to her goofy self..( we were suuuuure glad) ;)
Quote from: Teresa on August 13, 2007, 05:57:27 PM
she was back to her goofy self..( we were suuuuure glad) ;)
Yep, that me. Goofy.
Quote from: emptynest on August 08, 2007, 09:53:13 PM..."Howard----next 7 exits"....
:o :laugh: ;D I LOVE IT!!! ;D :laugh: :o
You know, if traffic gets too bad, we might have to put one of those stupid highway things like Florence has, a go around or a turn around or whatever they call it, we might have to put one out on 99. They are going to build one at Fredonia. What ever they are called, they supposedly keep accidents down. What they do to me is send me the wrong way.
That was the navigator's fault, too. She hadn't seen one before.
they have one of those circles at Newton and it is absolutely DUMB in my opinion, which isn't worth much at the moment. It does bring to mind the Griswalds in Paris, however. ;D ;D ;D
(I modified the is to isn't :-[)
Lawrence is now full of traffic circles. Not only do they slow down traffic, they fairly frequently stop it. You know, those cars that hit other cars, and especially the ones that just go straight. Traffic circles that small are pointless. Ask the folks who have to drive fire trucks through them.
Re: Current County Maps.
For those of you who have broadband and have Google Maps (they are free) check out this link.
LINK (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&msa=0&om=0&msid=103624063280663580327.000437ac4ed756387906d&ll=37.470022,-96.253881&spn=0.031813,0.080338&z=14)
You can move around the view around to any area you are interested in and zoom in and out. The road names and number will come in when you zoom into 1 mile or less.
For your information the road data that Google uses for map is supplied by NAVTEQ. They supply supply the road data for almost all the car navigation systems and handheld navigation systems except for the Tom Tom device. I have a navigator in my Acura and when I was back in the area in May and it was absolutely flawless for Elk County. My data is a 2003 version and it was not too accurate for the new build areas around Wichita. Basically if your road was open in before 2003 it was on my dashboard display.
regards
-=crl=-
I drove Acura 3.2TL's for several years. Their maps were actually pretty darned good if they had coverage at all. They actually seemed to have all the country roads, although they missed a lot of the smaller cities. However, Delorme mapping software, a GPS device, and a laptop have absolutely everything.
:)
Fixed the link for you Leonard.. ;D
Quote from: Janet Harrington on August 08, 2007, 06:30:31 PM
About 5 of us sat in the appraiser's office one day and came up with the names for our roads.
Janet: I wish to add my congratulations to a job well done.
I have never been back in Elk County long enough to appreciate the resulting rural addresses. However my ancient
Bachelors from KU is in geography and I spent an large part of my time in graduate level cartographic work.
The toughest nuts to crack in that work was always - "where something is at". So I can appreciate the job you and
the other four members of the working group(?) accomplished.
I can also vouch for the fact that it's success is a very rare event. You and your colleagues should be honored and recognized.
I am sure guru's who study small group dynamics will be severely depressed when they discover they missed this opportunity. :'(
Quote from: Leonardcrl on August 16, 2007, 01:59:59 PM
Janet: I wish to add my congratulations to a job well done.
I can also vouch for the fact that it's success is a very rare event. You and your colleagues should be honored and recognized.
Thank you, Carl. I believe that is the first compliment I have received for that work. Connie Hey was wonderful and is still keeping the addressing going. 911 addresses are an everyday progress. I can't imagine having to keep that stuff up in a large populated area.
(Again, I show you, that it IS all about me. LOL)
So why didn't you name a road after yourself? It was your perfect opportunity!!! Come on, we could've had a "J-Lane"
or "Harrington Highway" or "Sheriff Court". Wait! Ta-Ta Terrace---
Emptynest, I think we have a winner! "Ta-Ta Terrace" is just perfect.
It's not too late, is it, Janet?
Tell me it's not too late!
;)
I sort of kind of did name one after me. Now, I'm going to tell you what my middle name is, (which I don't like to do), but we named the J road Junebug because Kansas has junebugs and my middle name is June. Ha ha
I wondered how you came up with Junebug. That is what we used to call your Aunt June.
The farm is on Junebug Road. We wondered at the time what we had done to piss you off, but the name kind of grows on you. Now if we could just get people to stop stealing the sign. I bet it has been taken 5 or 6 times, and it is gone now.
QuoteNow if we could just get people to stop stealing the sign.
I've heard that's a problem with several of the road signs.
Some people do NOT think! >:(
Some people just want the real sheriff's middle name in their house. Ha Ha
Actually, there probably aren't too many roads in the United States named Junebug, so it makes it kind of unique.
Microsoft Strees and Trips listed just 35 of Junebug or June Bug streets and avenues or lanes in the United States without the one in Elk County.
Cool. We weren't so different after all.
??? ??? ??? ???
If you try to look for an address in the county,on mapquest you do not want to beleive it.
Does anybody know how to get an up to date address to mapquest?
Sorry to disagree, Ta Ta, but yes, you are different, dear.
That's why we e-hug you so much.
At least an e-hug won't get us in much trouble with Mr. Ta-Ta.
Quote from: hhjacobs on August 20, 2007, 07:00:50 PM
??? ??? ??? ???
If you try to look for an address in the county,on mapquest you do not want to beleive it.
Does anybody know how to get an up to date address to mapquest?
MapQuest uses the NavTeq database and you can submit address corrections to it. There is a form on their
web site (http://www.navteq.com/) to submit updates and corrections. On the menu bar across
the top of the site pick the "Map Reporter" and you will get the dialog and a form that you can use to submit
your correction.
How long it would take a fix to get into MapQuest? You will have to ask them :)
An aside: See Teresa I figured out how to use the Url insert you showed me on the Geek Table ;D
Just an aside, Leonard. Are you still interested in help with blogging and other similar things?
I noticed that right off Carl...
(http://www.cascity.com/howard/animations/congra.gif)
You did goooood.... ;D
Quote from: Kermit on August 21, 2007, 01:15:44 PM
Just an aside, Leonard. Are you still interested in help with blogging and other similar things?
Kermit: Yes I am. If I every work my way out from under the pile of stuff that accumulated from my May-June
excursion up north I'll get back to the subject. Keep an eye open on the Geek Table :)