Salem, We Need To Talk About State Street

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Salem, you need to get a grip. You got lots of problems. You might run out of money. That's bad. You might close your public library. That's appalling.

But this ...

Explain, I will.

Now, Salem has directional addresses as anyone who's ever heard me drone on about city maps and street layouts and address systems will, after all this, have by now known. And especially if you live there. And it works like this: If you're on the east side of the Willamette River but north of State St, you're NE. And if you're on the east side of the River and south of State St, you're SE. But if you're on State Street, you're neither NE or SE; it's the dividing line. Also, there's no State Street on the west side of the river, so there's no State St W, therefore, no State St E. 

It's just State St. It always was State St. 

Now, just west of Cordon Road NE, which is where town ends (both the unincorporated fringe and the city limits, where they come out that far) and on the north side of State, for years, there was a field, going up to a rail siding that ran parallel to State, and a locally-famous mushroom production facility. I lived on Abiqua Ct SE, just off State via 47th Ave SE, during some formative years during my teens, and we all knew about it

You know what mushrooms grow in. The smell got around.

Well, in the decades since, the mushroom plant has gone, and the rail line with it, and at long last the area along the west side of Cordon Road NE going north from State Street in the direction of Auburn Road is finally being filled in with a housing tract. New streets going in, new houses going up, little old Snailem inching its population ever closer to 200,000. Some of the street blades have already gone up. and here's one sharked from Google Street View:

State St NE, the sign says. And this is wrong, Salem, and you know it.

Why is that a problem, you might ask? Wouldn't the north side of State Street be NE? Well, like I said before, State Street is neither NE nor SE, and it's not E because there's no W half. Besides, most blades along State St just look like this:

This is 47th Ave SE and State, just a few blocks west of that (this corner is in unincorporated Marion County, which has shifted to a street blade format nearly identical to that used within Salem city limits over the years). Just State St. Just like it always has been.

Like eliminating the leading-zero district here in Portland and making it S, labelling State St as NE or SE depending on which side of the street you're on fixes a problem that doesn't really exist and erases a charming local address custom. 

Now, Salem, I know you're short of money and all, so all you have to to is stick a piece of green over that NE there. 

But however you do it, get a grip here.

I say this because I care.

The author is available as a highly-opinionated consultant on designing street naming and address systems due to his obsession of it over the course of more than four decades. Contact for rates.