Rural Addressing

Residents

Rural addressing allows 911 operators to help fire; ambulance and police find your home quickly in the event of an emergency. When seconds count, there is real peace of mind knowing that help is on the way - directly.

How does Rural Addressing Work?

Your rural address effectively provides an address and a house number for every household on your property. A rural address is not the same as a legal land description (which provides a land location, but does not identify individual residences on a property) or a postal address, which directs mail through Canada Post.

Rural addresses in Foothills County were implemented in 2009 using the existing street/avenue grid, where street and avenue numbers increase every 100 meters. Streets running north-south and increasing in both the east and west directions from Meridian Road (located on the fifth Meridian); and avenues running east west starting at 146th avenue (which aligns with the City of Calgary's 146th Ave south) and increasing southward. The rural address is essentially a coordinate that gives a street and an avenue and a distance from their intersection.

It works as follows: - The address has three parts: the reference street or avenue (perpendicular to the road which accesses the driveway), the address unit (a number between 1-260) which tells the distance the driveway is from the intersection and the access Street or Avenue (The road which provides access to the driveway).

Image
A diagram referencing how to determine your rural address.

 

The County has produced a detailed guide to how rural addresses are determined and assigned.  Once you have been assigned a rural 911 address, you may wish to install a blue and white address sign. The specifications for installing these signs is available.

Frequently Asked Questions