3976
This is still a new thing for me.
When I was but a neat thing, a baby Oregonian, and I started loving road signs, State Highways in Oregon were simple things. There were the big ones, trunk highays, I suppose, like 99E and 99W and 22 and 18, and there were all the rest, that started with the number 2.
Downtown Silverton, for example, exists at the intersection of Hwy 213 and Hwy 214. The "2" apparently denoted less regional roads. There were no notable highways I knew of that started with "1" (and there never has been a State Hwy 1.
Before I go any farther, let me define my terms in the vernacular. The technical nomenclature for a signed State Highway is, as in other states "Route"; the rubric is "Oregon Route", so my old hometown highways were OR 214 and OR 213, where OR is the abbreviation for "Oregon Route". That is not what us proles called it though. The colloquial term for an Oregon Route, as I was growing up was "State Highway" or just, most often "Highway". More discriminating language, especially in Marion, Polk, and Clackamas counties where there were only Interstates and State Highways, just wasn't all that necessary. No US routes run through the heart of the Mid-Willamette Valley.
To ODOT, though, the term "Highway" always had a very specific meaning, quite like an internal file or catalong number. While there is no "OR 1", there is a State Hwy 1; it's OR 99 (Pacific Hwy 1), OR 99E (Pacific Hwy 1E) and 99W (Pacific Hwy 1W). Signed routes in the State Highway system function like bus routes in a city bus network: one numbered route can follow many named streets. A very typical example is the Hillsboro-Silverton Hwy No. 140: It's signed as OR 214 from Silverton to Woodburn but is OR 219 from Woodburn north to Hillsboro. A lot of state highways, however, while maintained and owned by the State of Oregon, had no route numbers.
In 2002, ODOT decided that may be it would be a useful wayfinding thing to have those highways sport route numbers, and so it was determined that all unsigned state highways should have route numbers and those route numbers, wherever possible, should simply be the highway numbers that ODOT always used internally. Prior to 2002, the road from Tillamook to Oceanside was known by local names and to the state as Netarts Hwy No. 131;, after 2002, it would be OR 131.
It's an ongoing process. Many formerly unsigned Routes have shields up; many do not. And it gets stranger, to the lifelong 20th Century Man; whereas before, all state highways ended at other state highways, now, state highways just end. OR 131 is a route with a stub-end, and that stub-end is in Oceanside.
So, now, I'm confronted with this signage, which fascinates me as does a shiny thing a corvid:
One other thing of interest here: the red post on the STOP sign. This is a Tillamook County thing, as far as I can see, and I saw it often in that county, but this is a clever and good idea and I think it should catch on.
In Tillamook County, see, no matter what else you tell Mr. Officer Sir, you cannot tell him you didn't see the stop sign.
