Ah, posting again. Grades are (finally) all turned in, and now I can turn at least some of my attention to other pursuits (like Flickr and blogging) that are of little professional consequence but keep me from going insane :-).
This was taken on my "24 hours of Flickr walk". There aren’t many of these old street signs left in town, but the few we do have are cool.
Being a "sprung from nothing" railroad town, the bulk of Morris has a nice, regular grid system of streets. The east-west streets follow a very sensible numbering system (5th, 6th, 7th, etc.) The north-south "avenues", however, are named after U.S. states (e.g., Colorado), but in a (as far as I have ever been able to work out) completely haphazard and random fashion.
The two avenues that flank the railroad tracks that run through the middle of town are Atlantic (commonly known as Main Street) and Pacific. This sort of makes sense (Atlantic on the east of the tracks, Pacific on the west), but after that it’s a jumble. We live on 10th and Nevada, and the next street over is Wyoming. Colorado and Montana are also adjacent, but completely on the other side of town from us. If there was any rhyme or reason to their choices and ordering of states it completely escapes me. Consequently everyone can tell you the numbered street for things, but rarely can they tell you the cross avenue.
CoryQ has pointed out that they aren’t ordered by date of admission into the union. I hadn’t ever thought to check that, but a quick look definitely rules out that possibility.
It was the only order that I could think of. Now that admission date is ruled out, I am completely stumped. So much for being any help!