Redwood City, California has a strange mix of street grids. There's a roughly NSEW grid downtown, with separate grids to the northwest and southeast angled abou

Redwood City, California has a strange mix of street grids. There's a roughly NSEW grid downtown, with separate grids to the northwest and southeast angled about 45 degrees. The grids meet in confusing jumbles of triangles: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4861576,-122.2356476,15z https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4861576,-122.2356476,15z It's easy to see where the 45 degree grids came from: one parallels El Camino and the railroad tracks, the other parallels Middlefield Road. But why the abrupt change to a NSEW grid in between? Downtown Redwood City was once a shipping harbor and a center of the redwood logging trade (thus the name). Redwood Creek ran N-S through this area, and downtown was built up around it. If you're familiar with the area, the multistory parking garage between Broadway/Marshall/Main/Jefferson is located where the "turning basin" was: a wide part of the creek where ships could turn around, with businesses along the banks. Broadway was originally named Bridge Street, for its drawbridge that connected the two sides of the creek. There's an interesting historical marker on Broadway across from the driveway into the garage, and here are a few pages with maps and photos: https://1084.myt.li/tours/45512040/stops/1980869008/index.html https://1084.myt.li/tours/45512040/stops/1980869008/index.ht... http://www.redwoodcityport.com/p7iq/Assets/port_history_for_web.pdf http://www.redwoodcityport.com/p7iq/Assets/port_history_for_... http://www.redwoodcity.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=1038 http://www.redwoodcity.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=1038 [PDF]