Question of the Day - 02 December 2023

We've written about the names of streets, especially as they pertain to celebrities, but we've never been asked to answer a question about the differences in the designation of streets, roads, avenues, parkways, etc. It's an interesting question that stimulated our curiosity juices. 

Fact is, rules are in place regarding road classifications. Like most rules, exceptions are plentiful, but from what we can tell, they're generally adhered to. You can see the City of Las Vegas' 52-page "Street Naming and Address Assignment Regulations" (see page 13 for the suffixes -- and thanks to Peter B for the link).

Who created the rules? The answer to that question is lost in the mists of history, but you can get a hint from the etymology of the terms themselves. 

For example, our word "street" is derived from the Latin strata, which means "paved road." But the local equivalent was first used, according to our research, in the second century BCE in a surviving account of a certain resident of Ashur, a town in Mesopotamia (now northern Iraq), who lived on Akitum Street (and owed taxes to the government, which might have been in the time of King Hammurabi, the Great Codifier of Laws). The "street" was apparently a processional way to a temple, meaning it was busier with pedestrians than the more common "roads" of the time, a word derived from the Old English "rád," meaning "to ride," indicating more horse traffic than people on foot. You can trace the etymology of similar words -- lane, drive, circle, pike, court, terrace, etc. -- to get a glimpse at how the rules evolved over time. 

As the terms resolved into specific definitions, lexicographers, postal and address-assignment officials, city planners, and departments of transportation applied the nomenclature, which became somewhat uniform.

Today, a road, the most common of the designations, tends to head out from the heart of a settlement. This could be why it's Flamingo (1947) and Desert Inn (1950) roads, which were established when there wasn't much beyond them to the east and nothing to the west, while Sahara (1952, but originally known as San Francisco Road) and Tropicana (1957) are avenues, meaning that they were less rural, at a time when the east side was becoming more developed. 

Of course, as you say, a boulevard is a wide avenue, often with trees on both sides and in the median. As it grew out of the dusty Highway 91 from Los Angeles, Las Vegas Boulevard definitely deserved the designation.

As for Siren's Cove, "cove" is the accepted definition for a short road with a dead-end, a synonym for "cul-de-sac." Siren's Cove originally dead-ended at Treasure Island, so not only did it make sense according to the nomenclature, but it also enhanced the theme of the property. Now, however, the full name is Siren's Cove Boulevard, since it connects to Mel Torme Way (nice thyme to that) and crosses the Strip to provide access to Palazzo. 

Finally, we come to Maryland Parkway. The real mystery here is where the "Maryland" comes from, a question we researched for a 2017 QoD and couldn't answer. Another mystery is why a street named after a state is way over on the east side, when all the other state streets -- Wyoming, Utah, New York, Colorado, etc. -- are in the Naked City section of town west and north of the Strat. 

We did inadvertently answer today's question in advance when we learned and reported that Maryland Parkway was initially laid out, paved, and named in 1942 as part of a major subdivision, starting a few blocks north of Charleston Avenue and continuing for around a mile south. As such, it was probably already wider than a street and landscaped, so the developer wanted to give it a more showy designation, which the street-name overseers went along with. Now, of course, it's anything but a parkway, but it's also too late to change the name.