You know the old saying: April showers bring May flowers. Well, most of Arizona didn’t get much in the way of showers this April, but since May is finally here, it naturally got us thinking about flowers…the only way we know how.

Did you know that several Arizona highways can bring you into locales named for various types of flora? 

Let’s start with an easy one. State Route 87 passes through the community of Sunflower. You’ll find it about halfway between Payson and Mesa. Farther north on State Route 87 are the neighboring communities of Pine and Strawberry.

Speaking of pine, it’s quite prolific in the northern part of our state. On State Route 260, you will pass by Pinedale, Pinetop and Indian Pine.

Being Arizona, it's no surprise that motorists may see cactus-themed names on their travels. US 191 features a locale south of Stafford called Cactus Flat. And the small community of Cactus Forest lies just south of Florence on State Route 79.

Speaking of Florence, that name itself comes from the Latin florens, meaning blossoming, flourishing.

Lastly, there is Cactus Road, a street that covers 36 miles across the Valley, crossing Loop 303, Loop 101 (twice!), I-17 and State Route 51.

While not a specific genus, you’ll pass through Flower Pot on Interstate 17 near the junction of State Route 169. Further up I-17, you can take a detour on State Route 260 and soon find yourself in the City of Cottonwood. Of course, Cottonwood was named after the various hard to distinguish trees and shrubs that pop up ubiquitously in the Verde Valley.

The historic Route 66 name lives on in the northwestern part of our state. Turn onto State Route 66 from Interstate 40 and pass through the village of Hackberry, which was named for the nearby Hackberry Mine which, in turn, was named after the hackberry tree.

Finally, take a trip on Interstate 8 and visit Dateland, home of the famous date shake.

From lane striping to signage, a lot of what you see every day on a state highway or interstate has been standardized so people know what to expect as they get from Point A to Point B. However, every once and awhile, you can still find some irregularities.

Case in point: State Route 85, which has two different numbering schemes. Between Gila Bend and Interstate 10, the highway starts at milepost 117 and ends at milepost 154, with the numbers ascending south to north like they are supposed to. But heading south out of Gila Bend it starts at 0 and counts up to 80, when it terminates at Lukeville and the international border. You can see the numbering in this milepost map to the right. The green line heading northeast and south is SR 85.

So why the dueling numbering? Well, after consulting our 2012 Arizona Transportation History and officials in our Southwest District, we have arrived at a possible answer: State Route 85 was not originally one road.

Starting back in the 1930s, what was the road between Phoenix and Gila Bend was part of US 80, a coast-to-coast highway that ran from Georgia to San Diego. After the country started building interstates, most of US 80 between Yuma and Gila Bend became Interstate 8, which then continued east toward its current junciton with Interstate 10. The portion of US 80 that went north from Gila Bend was now designated State Route 85 with some tweaks to its alignment (you can still see and drive the original route Old US 80, which takes you over the historic Gillespie Dam). It appears this road more or less simply kept the mile marker numbers from US 80. That would explain why it starts at 117 and then keeps on going.

Now south of Gila Bend is a whole other story. The 1931 map of the state highways system shown here has a county road heading south from Gila Bend to Ajo and then striking east to Tucson.  By 1941, another highway map shows that Gila Bend to Ajo was now State Route 85, with another county road striking south toward Lukeville. The route from Ajo to Tucson would become State Route 86 shortly thereafter. The full route between Gila Bend and Mexico was not adopted as State Route 85 until the 1970s.

There are couple different plausible explanations about this segment's numbering that arise from all that. The first is that, since State Route 85 and 86 were sharing a good swath of highway for a bit, the whole thing was considered one long west-east road, which meant the western terminus at Gila Bend should start with "0." The other is that when the state made a determination for State Route 85 between Phoenix and the international border, the previous numbering on the northern segement, in use for decades, meant they couldn't start with "0" at Lukeville and make it all consistent. They may have just reasoned they were adding a new highway to the state system and determined that the start of the miles markers would be at Gila Bend.

As with most oddities in the system, this one traces its roots back to the earliest days of Arizona highways. The seemingly arbitrary numbering is a just a throwback to a time when everyone was still deciding how exactly to get between Point A and Point B.

Good ol' Why, Arizona.

This unincorporated community in southern Arizona of just over 160 people (as of the last census) always ranks high on the list of weird town names in Arizona, and often makes the list for the most unusual place name in the country.

So what does an off-kilter town name have to do with transportation? There are a couple of theories about the name's origin that float around, but, believe it or not, the most repeated answer comes down to highways.

Why sits at the junction of state routes 85 and 86 in southwestern Arizona, just north of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Tohono O'odham Nation. Back in the day, that intersection was a "Y" intersection. According to some sources, people in the area got used to saying they lived at "the Y," referring to this junction.

When the community was big enough to warrant a post office, residents told authorities that their community was called "Y."

The only hiccup was the law required all communities have a name consisting of at least three letters. So residents came back with "Why." Same sound and just the right number of letters. Problem solved.

Years later, the intersection of state routes 85 and 86 was moved slightly south and reconfigured for safety, removing that "Y" naming impetus all together. 

But that legacy lives on every time someone heading to or from Rocky Point sees a sign with the community's name and stops to ask: "Why?"

By Caroline Carpenter / ADOT Communications

State Route 85 is commonly used by Arizonans to reach the beaches of Rocky Point, Mexico, or as a connection between Interstate 10 and Interstate 8 on trips to western Arizona and Southern California. The southern portion of the highway, from Gila Bend to the Mexican border at Lukeville, follows a corridor that helped support Arizona's economy before it was a state.

Because of the route's importance in state history, it's been designated a historic highway.

The five Cs (copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate) were important to Arizona’s economy in its early years, and SR 85 became the main route to the Ajo copper mine, established in 1854. In the late 1880s and early 1900s, railroads were completed in the area to move copper across the state. As mining became increasingly important to the state’s economy, Maricopa and Pima counties worked to improve their portions of the future SR 85 from Gila Bend to the community of Why. State Route 85 was officially added to the state highway system in 1936. By 1939, the highway between Gila Bend and Why was paved, and the segment from Why to the border was completed in 1943.

The 80-mile stretch between Gila Bend and Lukeville has been designated a historic highway. Today, SR 85 extends well north of Gila Bend to Interstate 10 near Buckeye and is still critical to Arizona's economy. SR 85 has been identified as one the state's key commerce corridors. ADOT recognizes it is an important route in our transportation system and critical to the health of our state’s businesses and economic well-being.