I've been looking for a thread post about this. I always found it odd they put "Via County Road" on the signs in Kansas when I was browsing Street View to plan my next road trip.
In my opinion, they should put that kind of 'disclaimer' only for dirt/unpaved county roads. It would make more sense to me. In the Western states, I believe they would put that wording if they had substantial county roads connecting towns. Usually because the distances are so far, towns are connected with at least state highways in the West.
In order for a place (either an incorporated city or an unincorporated community) to receive "Via County Road" signing in Kansas, the following must happen:
* It must be shown on the
official state transportation map (the same one you can pick up at tourist information centers).
* The county commissioners must request the signing.
* The routing must be by rural secondary (RS) roads and the county is responsible for any follow-on trailblazer signing that is necessary. (RS roads are indicated as such on the official county highway maps KDOT publishes. They are shown in black while ordinary county or township roads appear in gray, and generally represent a fairly small subset of the total locally maintained road system outside incorporated cities. While the RS system includes unpaved roads, in fairly populous counties such as
Sedgwick or
Saline, it includes most of the rural paved county road mileage.)
Thus, in Kansas at least, the function is less to indicate "the road to this destination may not be paved" and more to say "this destination is not directly reachable from the state highway system but is nevertheless considered locally important." I don't know if Nebraska has similar rules for its version of this signing.