"standard road"

[c172]

I was reading the page of a Bakersfield TV duopoly and it talked about an accident on "7th Standard Road". I have never heard of a standard road. Anybody from hat area, or anybody else knows what that is? Sounds like that wasn't right in Bako, but in Kern County somewhere else.
http://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/traffic-fatality-on-7th-standard

[jakeroot]

Are you wondering where the name originated? Or if "standard road" is some sort of classification? If the former, I couldn't tell you. But if the latter, the name of the road is "7th Standard Road". I don't believe it's some sort of mystery classification...

[c172]

Well, it's a mystery to me. How did the name originate, and what does it mean? Is it a Bakersfield area/Kern County thing, or is this a classification that's widely used?

[jeffe]

The newspaper The Bakersfield Californian had an article about that:
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/2010/11/28/ask-tbc-how-did-seventh-standard-road-get-its-name.html

Seventh Standard Road lies on the Seventh Standard Parallel. Standard Parallels are the method used in surveying to compensate for the curvature of the Earth's surface and the convergence of the lines of longitude. These Standard Parallels are generally 24 miles apart.

In most of Kern County and central California, the Standard Parallels are measured from Mount Diablo, which is located east of the San Francisco Bay area. In addition to Seventh Standard Road, at the northerly boundary of Kern County, County Line Road is along the Sixth Standard Parallel and south of Bakersfield, Copus Road is on the Eight Standard Parallel.

[roadfro]

To expand on the answer:

The particular method of surveying employing Standard Parallels is the Public Land Survey System. This system of surveying is used in most of the United States, except for Texas, Hawaii, much of the original 13 colonies, and some other areas. It should be noted that there are both parallels (east/west lines) and meridians (north/south lines), which are located at set distances from a baseline (east/west) and principal meridian (north south) passing through a point of origin. Several origin points are used throughout the country, some serving large swaths of land and others much smaller–Mount Diablo was the survey origin for most of California and all of Nevada. Thus, this system also provides the namesake of many instances of "Baseline Road" (and possibly the less common "Meridian Road").


If you are familiar with terms such as 'township' & 'range', or heard of a 'section', these are also critical elements of the PLSS. (In roadgeek applications, you may have heard of a "section-line arterial", which would be a major roadway located along a survey section line.)

[Rothman]

Reminds me of Transit Road outside of Buffalo, NY, also named after the survey methods used.

[Jardine]

There is a road in Harrison county Iowa that is merely Good Enough . . .

[The Ghostbuster]

What happened to the 1st through 6th "standard roads"?

[NE2]

What happened to the 1st through 6th "standard roads"?

They didn't read the thread and were banned for inane posts.