West Virginia Highway Classifications and Route Markers

State highways

State highways represent the oldest class of numbered road in West Virginia, with a numbering system that dates to 1922. For the most part, these roads take on a directional pattern opposite from U.S. highways: East-west, odd; north-south, even. Irregular geography and decades' worth of renumberings, however, ensure that there are plenty of exceptions to the rule. Most state highways are built to the standard of two lanes with a central stripe, though in past decades many of these roads were unseparated or even dirt.

The 1922-23 Annual Report of the State Road Commission of West Virginia says: "On roads being maintained by the State, route numbers are being marked on telephone and telegraph poles along the road. The marker consists of two red bands six inches wide separated by a space of twelve inches painted white, upon which the number of the route is stencilled in figures six inches high." This was the same standard of signage that named auto trails had employed in the teens. This photo is the only photographic evidence of these early markers that has yet surfaced.

By the time the U.S. highway system came into existence in 1926, the State Road Commission had shifted to embossed metal signs as its preferred method of marking roads. Early state route marker signs were taller than they were wide (much like the telephone pole markings they replaced), with squared letterforms and the lettering "W VA State Route" at top. Some of these signs still exist in collector hands, although they're long-gone from the roads.

After rounded fonts made their appearance in the 1948 MUTCD, West Virginia very briefly produced some flat-painted signs with rounded letterforms, but essentially the same design and proportions as before.

A simplified marker on a white square background was introduced in the 1948 version of the MUTCD for junction sign assemblies. Perhaps because its previous route marker looked too much like a speed-limit sign, West Virginia took to this new design in a big way in the 1950s...even using it in reassurrance marker contexts, where the previous route markers were still permitted. Most signs made and posted during this period featured a narrow inner rectangle outline as a nod to previous designs, but a square version also started to appear by 1955.

National road sign standards were amended yet again in 1961, and West Virginia state route marker signs changed to a black background for improved legibility at a distance.

Once again these signs existed in "narrow" and "square" versions, with most of the "narrow" signs probably being 1950s white-edge leftovers that were brought in accordance with the new standard by being repainted in the field. I distinctly remember seeing one for WV 20 posted in downtown Princeton until the early 1990s. Unfortunately, this was years before I carried a camera with me at all times...

In the 1970s, a large number of new highways were commissioned bearing three-digit numbers. Most of these were either connecting roads that had previously been "Alt" routings of other state highways, or upgraded county highways (see below). Simultaneously, the state also began using horizontally-elongated signs for three-digit numbers.

In the mid-1980s, the West Virginia Department of Highways (as it was then called) began using wider Series D numerals on one- and two-digit route markers, resulting in a subtly different look to the signs. Thanks to chronic sign replacement over the last 30 years, this version is practically universal today.

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County (secondary) roads

Now, this is where things start to get strange...and start to get really interesting.

West Virginia's initial state road system in the 1920s did well connecting the state's through traffic routes and urban centres...but numerous sparsely-populated pockets of the state were left to the province of unsigned roads that were little more than rutted two-tracks for horses and Model Ts to ramble over; left to the custodianship of counties with nonexistent maintenance.

Obviously, this was a situation that demanded improvement. In 1933, a legislative act was passed placing all roads in West Virginia under state control. Next, the State Road Commission went to work inventorizing and mapping these "lesser" roads. Through roads that connected one place to another were assigned whole numbers (1, 2, 3, et cetera) and treated as secondary "trunks."

Minor connecting and spur roads were treated as "tributaries" of the state highways and secondary trunks they branched off from, and were assigned fractional numbers: The roads abuting Highway 44 would bear the numbers 44/1, 44/2, 44/3, and so on, then reset at the county line. The "denominators" were numbered in the order in which the state inventorized and commissioned them, not in the order of geography. Nevertheless, the initial-assigned batch of fractional highways in the 1930s did work their way numerically from north to south and from west to east, lending a sense of direction to the map.

In spite of the fact that these roads are numbered by the state, signed by the state, maintained by the state, and should quite properly be called "secondary state highways" (like the analogous systems in Virginia and North Carolina), they're known almost universally as "county roads" and are indicated in print with a CR prefix. One thing that is county-specific about the roads is their numbering: Each county is allocated its own set of whole and fractional numbers, numbers are duplicated between counties, and county roads can (and often do) change number as they go over county lines.

County road numbers have little significance for addressing and wayfinding. There is very little local awareness of the system. Ask someone on the street at right where they live: Chances are, most of them would answer "Lilly Addition Road," and some of them would answer with their own pet name for the street. Next to none would say that they live on "20/7," and even fewer would know that "20 over 7" is WVDOT's prescribed way for saying it. Nor does the Post Office use the numbers: Whatever mail comes to a county road will probably be addressed something like "Rural Route 2 Box 152," with no connection to road numbers.

Because the fractional road system ended up being exclusively for the domain of internal accountants, map geeks, and traffic engineers rather than for addressing or wayfinding, many of the roads became fossilized in time. There's no better example of this than West Virginia Route 44, the example just above. In the 1940s, this highway was renumbered "20." Yet, spur roads with "44"-denominator fractional numbers persist in several counties along the road to this day! Similar "numerator artifacts" of rerouted, renumbered, and decommissioned highways can be found all over the state.

Since the countywide traffic patterns in many places have changed since this numbering system was established, numerous anomalies abound. Sometimes an "insignificant" fractionally-numbered road will have evolved to be a major connecting thoroughfare built to "proper" state highway standards with pavement and a central stripe, while a nearby "significant" whole-numbered road is an unpaved relic in the same condition it was in in 1935! The names of roads often change as you follow one number from its beginning to its end...and conversely, the numbers of roads often change when you follow one name from beginning to end! Route designations can also stay in place when the roads and connections between them literally disappear...whether because they've been intersected and obliterated by an Interstate highway, flooded by a dam, or simply abandoned due to lack of traffic and left to return to the earth. After all, a lot can happen to a road in 80 years!

Numerous styles of signage have been used:

A few county roads are signed with circular black-and-white route markers similar to those for state and U.S. highways. This usually happens only in cases where a state or U.S. highway was "demoted" to secondary status, and traffic patterns dictated signage being kept to the same standards as before.

More often, county roads are marked with one-piece guide signs that emphasize the road's name over its number. Since the tail end of the 1990s these signs have used mixed-case Series E lettering, lending them a "mini freeway sign" look.

Slightly older signs from the 1980s and 1990s use Series C lettering in all caps. This variation is still fairly common on the roads, though it's far less omnipresent than it used to be.

1970s-era county road signage featured route numbers in outlined green circles. Most of these signs have succumbed to replacement over the last 30-odd years, and have gotten to be extremely rare sights on the roads...though a few of them still exist.

What style of signage was used to mark county roads before the 1970s? To be honest...I'm not sure.

I have vague memories of traversing back roads in Mercer County in the 1990s and very rarely seeing small black-and-white signs like these bearing nothing more than a route number and an arrow. Many of these signs were in poor physical condition, and none of them were posted on a major road. Was this the pre-1970s county road signage standard, or was this nothing more than a dream? I wonder...

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Though Interstate, U.S., state, and county highways make up the gamut of roads in the Mountain State, there are still other classifications that exist:

Delta roads

Delta roads are a peculiar West Virginia phenomenon. It seems that in the 1950s and 1960s, the State Road Commission found itself performing maintenance on privately-owned roads...either by accident due to a lack of detailed documentation, or as a personal favour to the constituents who lived on them. In March 1966, these motley two-tracks and glorified driveways were rounded up to be the basis for the Delta road system...established under the rationale that even though the state didn't own these roads, it could at least save itself some trouble by mapping, quantifying, and accounting for them.

Delta roads were something of an embarrassment to the WVDH and WVDOT, so by the 1990s the agency was taking steps to actively phase out the system. Today, Delta roads are essentially defunct and any signs that might remain are nothing more than obsolete artifacts of the past.

Why were these roads called Delta Roads? The story behind the name was probably a prosaic one: The State Road Commission needed a symbol to indicate this road class on maps that was adequately different from the squares and circles already in use, and a triangle was the next obvious choice of geometric shape. A triangle also happens to be the form of the Greek letter delta (Δ), and the name stuck.

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Home Access Road Program (HARP)

These signs have the same format as a county route sign, but with a number contained within a pentagon instead of a circle. They started appearing en masse over the most minor of minor dead-end roads around the year 2000, and completely threw me for a long time.

What is this? As it turns out, this is a "home access road program" sign, used to mark shared driveways or "pipestems" off of through roads. The program was spearheaded in 1998 by Governor Cecil Underwood, the tumultuous character whose other chief political accomplishment was the extremely nasty and libelous campaign he and Joe Manchin initiated torpedoing the gubernatorial bid of Charlotte Pritt and denying West Virginia its last real chance at an intelligent and forward-thinking governor. (Yes, I'm bitter.)

It seems that ol' Cecil just didn't want the concept of the Delta Road to die...though this time around, WVDOT gained title to rights of way outright to give the program more legal sheen.

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Park and forest roads

West Virginia's system of state parks and forests command their own road classification. These roads are unsigned, but carry "invisible" numbers that appear within a hexagonal surround on official WVDOT maps.

Park and forest roads are intended strictly for park and forest access, and rarely connect to more than one outside road.

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Federal Aid Non-State streets

In the last five years, official WVDOT maps started including yet another class of numbered road: Federal Aid Non-State (FANS). These are applied to selected streets maintained by municipalities, not by WVDOT, and as with park roads these numbers are "invisible" and are never signed in the field.

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The Network Mercer County

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©2019 Andrew Turnbull.
Last update 9 December 2019.