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Issue 32: 18 Years Ago: Board Approves Road Names
 | Eighteen years ago, in July 1989, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors approved names for all of the rural roads in the county. Before that, most of the rural roads were known officially by highway numbers, some of which had changed several times over the years. Many residents also called the roads by names which the roads had acquired informally over the years. In the late 1980s, the county was preparing to implement a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. |
| The CAD system would use state-of-the-art communications technology to provide emergency dispatchers and response personnel with precise information that would enable them to find locations as quickly as possible. A requirement of the CAD system was that every road have a distinct name, that a street address be assigned to each residence, and that the addresses be posted so that emergency responders could locate them easily. In the first phase of the countywide street addressing project, staff began researching the historical names of the roads. They found that many roads had different names at different points in history. In some cases, the historic names could not be used. Duplicate or sound-alike names would cause confusion for emergency dispatchers and response teams, and some names had already been taken by new community street names in eastern Loudoun or the incorporated towns. "Also, for a road to have a single name, it has to be continuous," said Richard Weber, who headed the addressing project as director of the county’s Department of Natural Resources. "If it starts and stops again somewhere else, each segment has to have its own name. Otherwise, it’s extremely difficult for emergency vehicles to locate the correct address in a hurry." On July 18, 1989, the Board of Supervisors approved the complete list of 353 rural street names. The Board considered input from local residents and historians, including cartographer/historian Eugene Scheel, before approving the names. As Scheel pointed out later, "altered tastes" meant the end of some of the county's historic – and colorful – street names, such as Gravel Pit Lane, Boo Hoo Church Road, Fannie Wilson Hill Road, and Miss Sue Wenner's Lane. In June 1989, the county awarded a contract to Environmental Services Research Institute to assign a five-digit address to every rural residence. Installation of the new street signs began in January 1990. Sources: Loudoun Overview, Fall 1989 Loudoun County press releases Image: A county work crew prepares to erect a new road sign, 1990. Photo by Jim Barnes | |
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