The 1962 Street Naming Party

Prior to 1962, no streets outside of the city limits of Washington had official names and no houses had numbers. The city limits around that time bordered to the north at Devonshire Road, to the south at Oakwood Drive, east at Lynn Street, and west at Bondurant Street.

In late 1961, the Washington Fire Department, led by Fire Chief Tom Boyd, set the goal of naming every street within their fire protection district and giving every house a number. According to Boyd, giving the street and house number when calling in an emergency would be better than saying “the fire is 1 ½ miles west of the old Garber place.”

A public meeting was set to gather feedback on the potential road names. Residents especially invited, according to the invitation, included “old timers, postal officials, real estate officials, and rural residents.” Some roads had colloquially developed names over the years. The Fire Department wanted to honor those, but they were also concerned about some roads that had developed names based on families who did not live on the road anymore, and the potential confusion it could cause.

After the public meeting, Fire Chief Tom Boyd, Postmaster John Norris, Township Supervisor Dave Snell, and several real estate brokers met at the fire station in early 1962 to officially decide on the naming of the roads.

One main issue was the naming of the fringes of Route 24. With Walnut Street and Peoria Street already named within the city, it only made sense to have different names for the east and west ends, so they came up with Eureka Road to the east and Washington Road to the west.

In the end, dozens of roads were named by the group in early 1962. Those roads were:

Caterpillar Lane
Cooper Road
County Line (now Tazewood) Road
Cruger Road
Cummings Lane
Deer Creek (now Dee Mack) Road
Diebel Road
Dutch Lane
Eureka Road
Foster Road
Grange Road
Groves Road (no longer exists)
Guth Road
Hickory Street
Heilman (now Hillman) Road
Highview Road
Hollands Grove Road
Hunziker Road
Inglewood Drive
Irish Lane
Legion Road
Liberty Lane
Linden Street
Linsley Street
Locust Street
Maple Lane (now Trails End)
Metamora Road (now North Main St)
Morton Road (now South Main St)
Nofsinger Road
Poplar Street
School Street
Schuck Road
Spring Creek Road
Springer Lane (no longer exists)
Sterling Street
Washington Road
Weaver (now Kern) Road
Wilmor Road
Woodlawn (now Woodland) Trail