Road approach

I went to the county building department for information on applying for a building permit. I have to apply for an address and a "road approach". This turned out to be interesting. Here's a map for reference:

See interactive map

N. Jacob Miller is a paved, county-maintained road. Rainshadow Dr. is a private road that serves some upscale houses to the North. I think that those folks don't want to share their road with us.

When my area was platted, they drew in roads around each block, but none of them were ever built. My land is surrounded by Market, Fern, Moss, and Sutter streets, but they don't exist. It's all wooded, but people in the area cleared along the green lines marked above, and it's drivable.

I asked the building department if I could put a driveway in to Fern or if I had to go to Sutter, and they referred me to public works. There I learned that, since these roads weren't built within 5 years of platting, the county has no interest in them any more. So these streets don't really exist. I can put in a driveway to any of them, without a road approach permit.

However, an address would be on N. Jacob Miller Rd. The way the county does addresses is based on mileposts. They measure the distance from the start of the road to the address, in 100ths of a mile. Then they tack on an extra digit - evens on the right side of the road, odds on the left. In this case, we are 0.75 miles from the start of N. Jacob Miller, so possible addresses are 750, 752, 754, 756, and 758. And they are already taken:

To fix this situation, we have to create a new road (what would have been Sutter), with a new name, and number off of it. I can't use the name "Sutter" because it's already used slightly to the East. See it here, marked in yellow:

I may also petition to name what-was-never-Fern, because I'd like my driveway to connect there.

Once the naming happens, all the addresses around the new streets get new addresses, based on the same algorithm. For example, 754 N. Jacob Miller is about 500ft. down, so it might get 90 New Rd. If I don't name Fern, then 750 and 756 will get renumbered on to New Rd. If I do rename it, then they get numbers on Another Rd.

The name has to be unique in the county (here's the current list). It can't even sound like an existing name, so that emergency radio communication isn't confusing. It can't be vulgar or obscene. (Which is which?).

There's already a Memory Lane and a No Way in the area, so those are out. What names would you use?