Several months ago, right after I returned from my Dust Bowl trip and tallied my new County Counts, I noticed that one of them, Lincoln County, Colorado was sort-of shaped like the letter L. So that led to Shaped Like it Sounds, a brief collection of States, Counties and Towns that mirrored the first letter of their names geographically.
That concept suddenly jumped to the next level when I noticed this amazing specimen of a road in a suburb of the Melbourne, Australia metropolitan area.
Behold the occurrence of Ashburton’s Y Street in the City of Boroondara, on the eastern side of Melbourne. This one was rather atypical of a Y Street since it was actually shaped like the letter Y (you may need to drill in to see the actual labeling). I couldn’t find any other single-letter streets nearby so it didn’t appear to be part of a larger grid. Someone consciously labeled this Y street due purely to its shape. It seemed rather odd. How would someone create a set of logical street addresses for a road that split like this?
So imaging giving someone directions: “OK, drive up Y Street to the Y-intersection. Now, bear left onto the left branch of Y Street; be careful not to take the right branch of Y Street. Yes, they are all the same Y Street…”
What About Other Letters of the Alphabet?
The highly unusual nature of Y Street became more apparent as I searched in vain for additional instances. I was certain there had to be others — it seemed too tempting to not spawn similar thoughts elsewhere — although I couldn’t find anything anywhere. Hundreds of towns with perfectly square or rectangular alphabetical grids jammed the results of major online search engines to the point of uselessness. Try to find an actual S-shaped S Street, or a circular O Street, or a crescent C Street. Post them in the comments if you find anything. I gave up.
I found much better luck when I converted my attempts from a single letter to a phonetic spelling. For example, convert the letter U to Ewe or You and one could easily discern several horseshoe-styled streets, paths or driveways that met the criteria. Some of them may have been designated intentionally. Others required greater imagination to appreciate and may reflect a Rorschach interpretation of my overly wishful thinking.
Nonetheless, I discovered a few possibilities after more time spent hunting than I’d care to admit.
- (C): See Road, Valley Head, WV (map). Turn the orientation on the map so that East points upward and a large C-shaped crescent appears
- (L): Ell Road, Hillsdale, NJ (map). A definite and most assuredly intentional L. There were several other Ell roads/streets although the one in Hillsdale was probably the best. Ell was the most common Letter-Shape road.
- (O): O Circle, Adel, IA (map). Oh! I so wanted to believe it was an O. It formed a circuit albeit more rectangular than circular when combined with N Avenue and 250th Street. “Circle” in this corner of Iowa appeared to represent any street with a 90° bend that didn’t change names. I don’t know why.
- (S): Ess Road, Kansas City, MO (map). Ess Road had a couple of legitimate S curves.
- (U): Ewe Road, Mechanicsburg, PA. I featured that one in the image above.
- (U): You Road, Kane, PA (map). Someone with a driveway had a good sense of humor
- (U): You Way, Parrottsville, TN (map). A definite U although I’m kinda wondering more about the name Parrottsville(¹) than the shape of the road.
- (Y): Why Lane, McVeytown, PA (map). It forms a Y intersection when combined with adjacent River Road; nowhere near as good as the Australian example though.
Additionally if anyone want to take a logical leap and say that snakes represent S, then there are hundreds of Snake Streets and such with multiple twists and curves.
What Were They Thinking?
I spotted three distinct segments of O Circle in Omaha, Nebraska and they all appeared ramrod straight except for their terminations at bulbous cul-de-sacs. What a completely lost opportunity. However, I did notice a dog about to relieve itself on a fire hydrant quite stereotypically, and that should count for something at least until the Street View car drives through the neighborhood again.
My disappointment with C Street in Crescent City, California was also palpable. With a name like Crescent City, shouldn’t it have a crescent-shaped street and wouldn’t C Street be the perfect candidate? Nope. It was simply one among many perpendicular and parallel lines (map) on a much larger grid.
Ditto for See Crescent in Avenell Heights, Queensland, Australia (map) which was neither a C nor a Crescent. A pox on the person who named that one deceptively.
By preemption, I’ll also note that any straight-line I street might be said to resemble its namesake, as would any L street if we considered the lowercase, or a T street that terminates in a T intersection. None of those were worth pursuing.
12MC Loves Footnotes!
(¹) Mysetery solved: “Parrottsville was settled in 1769 by John Parrott, an American Revolutionary War Soldier.” It had nothing to do with Jimmy Buffett.
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