The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

One of the things I find really amusing about &quot;Minneapolis&quot; streets is how they seem to go on forever. I now live roughly 40 miles away from Minneapolis, but I often come across nearby streets with the same name as the corresponding Minneapolis street if you extended it 40 miles south. And the numbers are suitably extended.<p>So Chowen Avenue might end at the 6200 address in Mpls, but you&#x27;ll find a Chowen Avenue in Burnsville, about 25 miles south, in roughly the same place laterally as it would be if it were extended south from Mpls and the street numbers will begin with something like 130000.<p>Don&#x27;t know if this happens in other places, but it never fails to make me smile when I see it.

A related article I&#x27;ve always liked: Fictitious Minneapolis street addresses: A guide for writers.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;southtwelfth.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;56794633391&#x2F;fictitious-minneapolis-street-addresses-a-guide" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;southtwelfth.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;56794633391&#x2F;fictitious-...</a><p>Somewhat tongue-in-cheek article that explores the intricacies of our road system to come up with a fake address that sounds believable.

Ironically, the author could have found a far more intricate mesh of stitched together street grids if they never left New York.<p>Here are all the numbered streets of New York City, colored by the number of the street.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;p48mipyctk5d1.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;p48mipyctk5d1.png</a><p>The New York street grid can really suck you in because its just organized enough to not be randomness, but not organized enough to instantly fit it to a simple pattern and move on with your life.

I wish more cities would compile and publish this information.<p>I grew up in Miami that has a sort of less-structured grid system where avenues are the primary north-south roads and streets are the primary east-west roads. There&#x27;s a through road every half mile, or numbering-wise every 8 streets or 5 avenues. So if you know this fact, you&#x27;ll know that SW 47th ave is extremely likely to be a through road until it reaches the coast, and SW 42nd Ave is maybe a bit less likely but still probably a through road. Same with SW 88th st (main through road) and SW 96th st (probably a through road). In between these main grid streets you&#x27;re on your own.<p>Incredibly, most people I speak to who live there do not realize this! As far as I can tell, it&#x27;s not explained anywhere on the county or city website, at least that I can easily google. It makes getting around the city&#x27;s surface streets much, much easier, but it&#x27;s just not common knowledge.

Baseline Road in Maricopa County, AZ can be picked up at the Salome Highway in Tonopah: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;bTe4WUQydug22Kqw6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;bTe4WUQydug22Kqw6</a><p>That&#x27;s nearly 50 miles west of Central Avenue in Phoenix, and it stretches another 33 miles east of Central, out to Apache Junction: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;VrjSYy7QEuX9yNee6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;VrjSYy7QEuX9yNee6</a><p>The Phoenix-area grid is super-square; I figured it out by way of city bus routes, which are usually numbered according to the block address of the street they travel on. Mileage can be estimated by the number of major intersections you pass.<p>It is important to distinguish between numbered &quot;Avenues&quot; on the west side and &quot;Streets&quot; on the east side, and in Phoenix as well as other cities, the &quot;east&#x2F;west&#x2F;north&#x2F;south&quot; designator of a road, as well as the city, must be considered when looking at any given address.

I spent a good part of my childhood on Girard Avenue North, part of the first alphabetical sequence running east to west. It was always a comfort to know I could find my way home if I knew the alphabet.

Penn Ave S is mostly really nice areas around Lake Harriet. Penn Ave N is one of the most dangerous areas in Minneapolis.

&gt; <i>Map made using ArcGIS.</i><p>Were these maps made manually using ArcGIS? Or is there a way to make them programmatically?

Relevant: TIL that the West Side of Saint Paul, Minnesota is south of downtown. The separate city of West St. Paul (note the spelling) is also south of downtown Saint Paul. East of West St. Paul is the also separate city of South St. Paul. There is also a separate North Saint Paul (note the spelling).<p>&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;np.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;todayilearned&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cbvtwt&#x2F;til_that_the_west_side_of_saint_paul_minnesota_is&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;np.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;todayilearned&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cbvtwt&#x2F;til_t...</a>&gt;

Despite living in Minneapolis for 5 years, I never understood the street grid until reading this article. The fact that streets and avenues are opposite in Northeast vs South Minneapolis (and how North Minneapolis only has avenues) is a constant source of confusion. Obviously it can be worse (I&#x27;ve spent enough time in Pittsburgh to know that), and having GPS navigation means the inconsistency hasn&#x27;t caused me very many actual problems. But still, it&#x27;s annoying that the grid system isn&#x27;t more consistent.

Did all this arise because multiple smaller towns with their own survey grids got absorbed into the city at some point, or did the different alignments happen within an already-extant Minneapolis?

Many cities could benefit from this exposition. Melbourne has a similar &quot;WTF&quot; moment in its grid alignment.

Relevant article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;racketmn.com&#x2F;the-history-behind-minneapoliss-alphabetized-street-names" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;racketmn.com&#x2F;the-history-behind-minneapoliss-alphabe...</a>

&gt; When I moved to Minneapolis from upstate New York last year<p>ah ha. Welcome to PLSS land, neighbor. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Public_Land_Survey_System#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Systemic_numbering_in_the_Public_Land_Survey_System.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Public_Land_Survey_System#&#x2F;med...</a><p>you will find this pattern EVERYWHERE. They didnt turn the entire country into squares, but by golly they got a lot of it.

Southeast and Northeast streets reminds me of back in the 90s when I lived in a house on East street. I was on the south end of the street so telling delivery drivers I was on South East street was always tricky.