Nevada state highways, pre-1976

[Quillz]

How did Nevada's old highway system work? I'm aware the only remnants of it today would be NV-28 and NV-88, both of which got their number from California highways, but the others, did the numbering follow some sort of grid or any other predictable pattern? I know that when CA-299 crosses into Nevada, it becomes (or was) NV-8A, a spur route. Did Nevada use spur routes similar to Washington's old numbering pattern?

[roadfro]

How did Nevada's old highway system work? I'm aware the only remnants of it today would be NV-28 and NV-88, both of which got their number from California highways, but the others, did the numbering follow some sort of grid or any other predictable pattern? I know that when CA-299 crosses into Nevada, it becomes (or was) NV-8A, a spur route. Did Nevada use spur routes similar to Washington's old numbering pattern?

Nevada's original state routes were not organized in any predictable pattern. The numbers were assigned directly by the legislature and written into state law.

While some numbers were assigned in similar areas–for example, SR 27 (now SR 431) leads to Lake Tahoe and SR 28 runs along the Lake Tahoe north shore–this is not universal. The next two numbers numerically are widely disparate–SR 29 (now SR 373) connects to Death Valley in southern Nevada and SR 30 (now SR 233) connects to Utah in northeast Nevada. Numbers were also reassigned on occasion, sometimes seemingly randomly.

There also existed a number of "spur" routes with lettered suffixes. However, these weren't always spurs in the strictest sense (the spurs of SR 32 & SR 33 in Reno did not touch their parent routes), and some just didn't make sense (SR 8A existed in two parts: the section in northwestern Nevada was originally a legitimate spur of SR 8, while the section(s) in central Nevada never a connection to the parent route, was longer than the parent route, and legitimately should have been numbered as its own route.


Notes on the italicized part of the quote:

CA 28 appears to have taken its number from NV 28, not vice versa. NV 28 first appeared on maps in 1948, while cahighways.org says the current CA 28 was signed in 1952 (a previous route 28 existed near Davis and was subsequently renumbered). However, NV 37 was renumbered to NV 88 in 1957 specifically to match CA 88.

An additional remnant of the original numbering system is SR 140. This is a unique case, which was part of a proposed "Winnemucca to the Sea Highway" spur of US 40 that renumbered part of SR 8A circa 1968. The route was going to be renumbered as SR 291 during the 1976 renumbering, but the 140 number was retained–it's one of the few intentional instances of a post-1976 state route whose number doesn't correspond to the current county clustering numbering scheme (SR 28 and SR 88 are the others).

[Max Rockatansky]

Not to mention that those "spur" highways served a lot of communities/mines that really don't exist anymore.  A lot of them were dirt roads like 8A...another that comes to mind is NV3C which actually served Aurora and connected to all things Bodie Road in California.