In 1866, “New York Tribune” correspondent Bayard Taylor traveled by horseback between the Boulder County towns of Marshall and Valmont. Even though Taylor called the ride “very enjoyable,” he complained that farmers had fenced in their square land parcels, forcing Taylor and his companion to zig-zag the whole way.

Eventually, the east-west and north-south roads in eastern Boulder County’s grid system were numbered. For nearly a century, though, most were unnamed. Then, in 1965, the county commissioners gave the east-west roads what a Camera reporter then called “somewhat alphabetical” names.

The names were meant to avoid confusion, but their lack of order still raises questions today.

The land parcels mentioned by Taylor had been homesteaded by farmers and ranchers in 640-acre sections — each a square mile. Most of the eastern county’s straight and squared-off roads that Taylor described still follow section and half-section boundaries.

One of the first east-west roads was Baseline Road. In surveying terms, it denotes the 40th degree of latitude. Baseline has retained its name.

Another historically named road is Arapahoe, obviously named for the Native Americans, although their correct spelling is “Arapaho.” Prior to the opening of the Boulder-Denver Turnpike (now U.S. 36) in 1952, Arapahoe Road was the main route into Boulder. Motorists from Denver would go north on U.S. 287, then turn west onto Arapahoe for the drive into Boulder.

Other roads that kept their names extended from Boulder to small towns. Valmont Road ran between Boulder and Valmont, just as Niwot Road went to Niwot and Hygiene Road went to Hygiene. Those names remain, too, even though they don’t conform to today’s roughly south-to-north alphabetical order.

In 1900, the U.S. Postal Service established rural mail delivery in Boulder County. Individual properties, for instance, were listed on Rural Route 1 or 2, but none had individual street numbers. Mail carriers simply sorted and delivered the mail to conform to the locations of the houses along their routes. That wasn’t difficult to do when the houses were spaced widely apart, but Boulder County’s population boomed in the mid-twentieth century.

That’s when the commissioners called for “a standardized street and road naming and house numbering plan.” These changes focused on more efficient mail delivery and quicker response time for emergency responders.

Little was written about how road names would be chosen. One reporter stated that they would be named for “peaks, passes, and lakes,” but it appears that those names were passed by to reflect early homesteaders, such as the Nelsons of Nelson Road.

Vermillion, Woodland (and also Wasatch), and Yellowstone roads, far to the north, likely were created to (almost) flush out the alphabet, but the verdict is still out on Jay, Isabelle and many of the eastern county’s roads. It could be that they were named for early settlers, as well.

Colorado State Highway 119 became the main anomaly during the 1960s road-naming era. Until then, drivers between Boulder and Longmont had to zig-zag on grid lines as Baylor Taylor had done so many years earlier.

“The Diagonal,” as Highway 119 is called today, is another road that doesn’t fit into the alphabet, but Bayard Taylor would have been pleased.

Silvia Pettem’s In Retrospect column appears once a month. She can be reached at silviapettem@gmail.com or through her website, silviapettem.com.