Landmark Routes

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When you get to a new city, do you ever find yourself using one particular route as your main reference for navigating the area? It doesn’t have to be the main street, just your main street – somewhere that connects where you’re staying with places you want to go.

It may not even be a regular surface street. It could be a transit line, a freeway, a pathway. It’s where you say, “if I can find _____, I can follow it to where I need to be.”

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For example, our Denver-area friends humored us by aways giving us directions – whether it was to the Botanic Gardens or just a nearby drugstore – that started us off on Arapahoe Road. Since that’s how we got to their house, that’s where we felt most oriented.

(Farther north, my Denver street of choice becomes Colfax, because it goes all the way across town and still passes landmarks I remember from childhood, like Casa Bonita and Elitch’s.)

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When I spent a summer in Sevilla, Spain, there was a particular bus (maybe the 34-?) that stopped near our dorms, ran by several of the University’s campuses and to the city center. Most of the time, it was the only bus I needed. If I ended up in another part of the city, I just had to find a 34 bus, and it would take me home.

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Is there a name for this type of central navigational lifeline? I feel like we need one. Landmark route? Reference road?

I’m open to suggestions.

PS Yes, that last photo (probably taken by someone in our group) is a skinnier, not-glasses-needing, 1999 version of me in Sevilla. ¡Viva España!