Joe Lewis doesn’t have any idea where 1250 E. 902 Road is.

Even when he’s playing 18 holes on it.

“I live in the city,” said Lewis, making the turn at Eagle Bend Golf Course, at the aforementioned location at the southwestern edge of Lawrence. “I couldn’t tell you where that address is. I’d have to call my (OnStar) tracking system to find out, because I really don’t know.”

For Lewis and many other urban dwellers  and some rural residents, too  Douglas County’s nearly decade-old system of numbers and directions for marking streets and addresses can be confusing, even frustrating.

But you don’t need to be a cartographer to translate the seemingly byzantine system of numbers to know where you’re going in the rural areas outside Lawrence, said Nancy Wilson, the county’s geographic information system analyst.

Just follow the numbers.

“Start with the southwest corner of the county as ‘zero-zero,’ ” Wilson said. “For every mile you go north, it’s 100. For every mile you go east, it’s 100. And on and on.”

Thus, the first road north of the county line is North 100 Road. Another mile north is North 200 Road, and so on through North 2190 Road north of Lecompton.

Likewise, East 100 Road is a mile east of the county line. East 1000 Road is 10 miles east of the county line, and so on through East 2400 Road, also known as the Douglas-Johnson county line.

Street numbers and addresses follow the same principle: 1471 E. 2400 Road, a home in the extreme northeastern corner of the county, is 14.71 miles north of the county line and 24 miles east of the western county line.

“Once you understand the basic concept, you can find where you’re going or where you are,” Wilson said. “Once I tell people that, they’re like, ‘Oh.’ They get it.”

Putting up big numbers

That means the golf course, at 1250 E. 902 Road, is 12.5 miles north of the county line and 9.02 miles east of the county line.

But try telling that to a golfer trying to make a tee time.

“I never give anybody the address,” said Bruce Rist, assistant golf pro at Eagle Bend. “Nobody knows where 902 Road is.”

Befuddled by the numbers jumble, Rist instead counts on the course’s listing in the phone book  “Below Clinton Lake Dam”  to direct people to the course

“The numbering system doesn’t help people that much,” Rist said. “But it’s definitely an improvement of what it was before.”

Before 1992, the rural areas of Douglas County were marked by a hodgepodge of rural routes, box numbers and other informal monikers that grew into a system that left residents relying on directions more than addresses.

And it wasn’t pretty.

“You used to say that you cross the covered bridge, then go back a quarter, cross Bear Creek and go east again,” said Jere McElhaney, chairman of the Douglas County Commission and longtime volunteer firefighter. “Because saying ‘Route 5, Box 28’ just didn’t quite cut it all the time. If you had a fire call come in, and the address was Route 5, Box 28 Â well, where is that?”

So county officials adopted the new addressing system, to go along with an enhanced 911 emergency communications system that attached a specific, grid-coordinated address to each road and structure in the county.

Pinpoint accuracy

“By looking at an address, you can pinpoint within a tenth of a mile precisely where it is that you’re talking about,” said Jim Denney, the county’s director of emergency communications.

Denney’s department dispatches police, fire and ambulance services in the county. The addresses allow computers to detail routes for emergency vehicles without confusion prompted by conflicting, antiquated systems.

“I can identify with the people who have some frustration with this,” he said. “I live in the county. I lived with a route number and a box number for 15 years. And when we had to change addresses to do away with the route numbers, I was confused, too.

“At first, I didn’t understand the logic of the system. Now I get it: Whatever the numbers are, that’ll tell you how far north and east of the southwest corner of the county you are.”

For Lewis, who plays Eagle Bend at least twice a week, an explanation of the addressing system likely won’t make much difference. He knows that he has to drive west on Clinton Parkway, then make two lefts to make his way to the links.

But at least he understands the thinking behind the program now.

“It makes sense,” he said.