What's in a name? If you left it to many Utah parents, they would invariably answer by adding extra consonants, transposing vowels and mashing-up two innocently sounding words leading us to the Madysens and Taycies of the world.
However, a more boring approach was used in naming most Salt Lake City streets. Due to the famously recognizable grid-like pattern, we're left mostly with numerals and cardinal directions: 1300 South, 900 West, 2100 East—how bland.
There are exceptions, of course. One of my favorite projects was tracking down, across the city, all of the streets named after individual U.S. states. Conveniently, most geographical areas are clumped together in individual residential neighborhoods.
Are you a fan of the Western United States? Well, head over to the Beacon Heights neighborhood in Sugar House, where you can find Wyoming and Nevada Streets. More of an East Coast type person? The Westpointe neighborhood has you covered with New York Drive and New Hampshire Avenue.
There are actually 16 states (see map above) that lend their names to SLC streets, which you can visit in the span of just an afternoon without all the hassle of transcontinental traveling.
And if you are in the mood for a scavenger hunt, there are other amusingly named roads that you can track down.
Like most cities, the U.S. presidents make a regular appearances, primarily concentrated in the southern half of the city—Garfield, Van Buren and Harrison Avenues, just to name a few. Appropriately, the Ivy League universities are well represented in Yale-crest; however some, like Cornell (Street), can be found in Fairpark, too.
The west side is, in fact, home to some of my favorite series of street names. There you can find several state capitals in Glendale, all four seasons in Jordan Meadows and, of course, various rose varieties in Rose Park.
But the most unusual set that I have happened upon are what I dub the "Knight Streets" (image below), which can be found just north of Meadowlark Elementary.
So, Tally Ho (also an SLC street name), and good luck with hunting down all these unique streets.
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