How Do You Get an Address for your House?

This is a problem that I'm sure few have faced. Even if you build a new house in a city, the lot is already numbered before any construction starts. We have a house on our property. What's the address of that house? Where does someone send U.S. Mail? We have never needed an address in West Virginia, but we will in order to establish residency.

Since we have our road/driveway named (Dogs Run Trail), and since that name correlates to a 911/EMS site for response in emergencies, we must live on Dogs Run Trail, right? So after a few email exchanges with the Tucker County 911 Service, our road was electronically mapped, measured, and our house numbered: 293 Dogs Run Trl.

So why 293? Fine, it is an odd number and our house is on the west side of the road, got that part, but where did the number 293 come from? In West Virginia, there are 1,000 addressable points per mile, or one addressable point every 5.28'. Thus, our house is 0.293 miles from the main road, as measured on an aerial map.

Funny thing, though. Distances and areas on maps are measured from vertical projections. Since the road climbs 200-300' in that distance (1,550'), it is actually longer if stretched out flat or actually driven. Same with acreage. It is stated 86.56 acres, but the property is larger than that because it is so steep. So, buy hilly land by the acre and get more than you pay for.