My favorite kind of quirky story is one that starts with some small, strange, maybe even trivial thing and expands from there to teach us about something bigger — in this case the history of our city and some of the people who literally put it on the map.
— Henry Brean
Stravenues in the Pueblo Gardens subdivision, like E. Menor Strav. and S. Tucson Strav., are a street name unique to Tucson.
We have left turns from Michigan and potholes from the pits of hell, but one local traffic oddity is an Old Pueblo original.
What do you call a road that runs diagonally between an east-west street and a north-south avenue? Here — and nowhere else in America, apparently — that’s known as a stravenue.
Pima County is home to 40 of them, mostly in mid-century neighborhoods built around Tucson’s angled arteries — Aviation Parkway, Benson Highway, the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and Interstate 10 east of I-19.
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The U.S. Postal Service even has an official abbreviation for the stravenue (that would be STRA), though mail carriers outside of Southern Arizona don’t need to concern themselves with it.
“Our records indicate the name is only found in Tucson, Arizona,” said Roy Betts, national spokesman for the Postal Service.
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 520-573 4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean.
Henry Brean
Reporter
