Arizona Highways got its start as a magazine about, well, Arizona highways. And while we've since expanded our mission to include Arizona travel and tourism in general, we still have a soft spot for unique roads — highways and otherwise. And Tucson has a set of roads you won't find anywhere else.
The Old Pueblo, like Phoenix, is mostly laid out in a grid, with the vast majority of streets running either north-south or east-west. But in both cities, there are outliers. In Phoenix, Grand Avenue, a stretch of U.S. Route 60, is the most well-known diagonal street.
But Tucson gave birth to a whole new type of road. As Atlas Obscura noted recently, it started in the 1940s, with Cherrybell Stravenue — a portmanteau of "street" and "avenue." Cherrybell is only a half-mile long, but it runs diagonally, whereas most of Tucson's north-south roads are avenues and most of its east-west roads are streets.
The local Uniform Naming and Numbering Committee agreed that "Stravenue" was the best halfway point between the two designations. Soon, there were about 30 stravenues in Tucson.
But this phenomenon hasn't spread to Phoenix, or any other city, for that matter. Stravenues are a uniquely Tucsonan designation. So, has anyone out there ever lived or commuted on a stravenue? And are there any other street designations you think should be combined?