Dakota County's street grid is the key that unlocks the suburbs
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One of Kyle's favorite street names in Apple Valley, Gaslight Drive. Photo: Kyle Stokes/Axios
Dakota County Commissioner Joe Atkins can find almost any house in Inver Grove Heights without a phone or GPS, which once made his daughter think he was "some kind of savant."
- He's not — he just knows the system that much of Dakota County has used to name streets since the 1960s.
The big picture: Once you learn the alphanumerical criss-cross, you can navigate huge swaths of the south metro — and see how the suburbs grew.
How it works: In mile-wide strips ribboned across nine cities, every north-south street starts with the same county-assigned letter.
- It's why, for example, most street names on either side of Cedar Avenue start with a G.
😵💫 Kyle's thought bubble: Growing up in this grid felt like living in a dictionary.
- I have always wondered why every street in my neighborhood was named after obscure "J" words like "Jaffna", "Jarosite" … and what exactly is "Jacquara"?
- It wasn't just a curiosity, it was a problem: These street names blurred together, turning neighborhoods — with one McMansion after another, and few distinguishing landmarks — into mazes.
Yes, but: There is a method to the madness: The farther east or west you travel, street names progress alphabetically.
- So Gaslight Drive is west of Garrett Drive, but east of Gladstone Path.
Plus: A numerical grid of east-west streets — based on their distance from the State Capitol — is also used to number houses.
- That's how Atkins can find his way to any address.
Between the lines: Before GPS and cell phones, the alphabetical rules helped first responders navigate through gnarled subdivision streets, Atkins tells Axios.
The intrigue: Street names help trace the county's development.
- Nearly 20% of the parcels built since 2020 are on "A" streets, reflecting Rosemount's swell in housing construction.
- In the 2010s, "E" names were the most popular, reflecting Lakeville's boom.
- The Inver Grove Heights B's were the story of the 2000s — and before that, it was the F's and G's of Apple Valley in the '90s.
The other side: The county allows cities to opt out of the grid — and when the system was adopted, "cities like Eagan and Burnsville were already built out or had established addressing patterns," Dakota County GIS specialist Todd Lusk tells Axios.
- So Burnsville's system borrows north-south street names from Minneapolis' grid. (You know, Aldrich, Bryant, Colfax…)
- Older cities like West St. Paul, South St. Paul, and Hastings also kept their own grids — and downtown Farmington does its own thing, too.
- Eagan is a wild child, with no discernible system. (It has one Monopoly-themed corner where the Boardwalk, Baltic Avenue, and Pacific Avenue all meet.)
Zoom out: Washington County also adopted a similar system in 1967, evident in the G's, H's, I's and a few J streets criss-crossing Oakdale and Cottage Grove.
- But Woodbury's lack of participation punches a big hole in the grid's continuity.
The bottom line: Street names are the key to decoding the south metro's suburban sprawl.
- "It's like this revelation," Atkins jokes. "Like in a movie scene … 'A Beautiful Mind,' where, you know, everything is spinning around — and all of a sudden it all seems to make sense."