Thursday, May 30, 2019

A Google Maps mystery. What does the location "1980 Stat Boundary" in Chicago and other larger U.S. cities mean?

While searching Chicago Google Maps, I found an L-shaped street labelled "1980 Stat Boundary" running north from the 2800 block of West Fulton Street and then turning west until it meets Francisco Avenue.
It turns out that "1980 Stat Boundary" is nothing more than an alley. The photo below shows the portion which goes north from the 2800 block of Fulton.
Please... use the link at the bottom of this article (yellow section) to comment if you know the meaning of "1980 Stat Boundary."

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

4 comments:

  1. I asked the surveyor at work and he said it likely stands for something like 1980 Statutory Boundary and was established as a public right of way using whatever ordinances existed at the time. he also added that Chicago has its own unique way of doing things that don't necessarily apply to anything outside of the city and a local surveyor may know more or where to look exactly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found a "Stat Boundary" in California about 30 miles north of Las Cruces. No year is mentioned. No clue as to what it is. But maybe if more are found, eventually someone will figure out what it means.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's a statutory boundary, one that has been legally declared, many time to reset the lot lines on a piece of property. There may have been a mapping or declaration error that was fixed in 1980, or that the lot lines of the properties required adjustment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I found "1980 Stat Boundary" as part of a street address in Creswell, Oregon. Here's a link to the Redfin page: https://www.redfin.com/OR/Creswell/32978-1980-Stat-Boundary-97426/home/26111717

    Geographic.org has a page entitled "List of street names in Ensley, Florida," an"1980 Stat Boundary" is the first on the list:

    https://geographic.org/streetview/usa/fl/ensley.html

    Finally, Streetadvisor.com has a page entitled "Streets in Shadeland, Indiana," and as in the case of the list for Ensley, Florida, "1980 Stat Boundary" is first in this list.

    https://www.streetadvisor.com/find-streets-in-city/shadeland-tippecanoe-county-indiana

    It also shows up on pages for Jersey City, Hoboken, Etna PA, Lafayette IN, and on a digital map of the City of Florence, AL. I stopped looking after that one.

    The most likely answer is that it is some sort of digital artifact that's left over from some interaction between GIS datasets that including census tracts. The most unlikely answer is that it is a secret sign of where the alien installations are buried (OK, I watched too much of the show "Fringe" back in the day!).

    Hope this is of some help.

    ReplyDelete

The Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™ is RATED PG-13. Please comment accordingly. Advertisements, spammers and scammers will be removed.