Notes/Comments
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1. A Landmark Name specifies a location by naming it. It does not relate the named feature to any thoroughfare system or coordinate reference system and therefore provides no information about where to find the feature. Many addresses include Landmark Names without any thoroughfare names, and as such Landmark Names form the basis for two address classes: Landmark Address and Community Address.
2. Landmark names are given to both natural and manmade features. In general, natural landmark names are not used in addresses and are therefore excluded from the scope of this standard. Thus "Yosemite National Park" could be part of an address, and therefore is within the scope of the standard, whereas "Yosemite Falls" and "Yosemite Valley" (naming the natural features) would not.
3. The difference between Landmark Name and a Place Name is not always clear and distinct. As a general principle, a landmark is under a single use or ownership or control, while places are not. Thus a landmark, even if it covers an extensive area, might be considered to be a single "master address" (often containing multiple subordinate addresses), while a place generally includes numerous separate addresses. These general principles apply to most cases and are useful as general distinctions, but exceptions and marginal cases are easily found.
4. Local address authorities may wish to compile a list of locally-recognized Landmark Names used as addresses for their convenience. Whether to do so, and if so what names to include, are implementation matters to be decided locally.
5. Most named landmarks that are used as addresses are also designated by one or more thoroughfare addresses. These should be cross-referenced to each other as Related Address IDs, using the Address Relation Type attribute to record the relationship between them.
6. Landmark Name, as used in this standard, does not imply any officially-designated historic landmark status, nor is it restricted to features having such status.
7. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has compiled and standardized names for many landmarks in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), each identified by a unique GNISFeature ID. Local authorities are encouraged to review the GNISFeature ID for more information on the use of the GNIS ID with Landmark Names.
8. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has defined 65 classes of features for use in classifying features listed in GNIS. These classes, while neither exhaustive nor necessarily definitive for addressing purposes, may provide useful guidance in distinguishing Place Names, manmade Landmark Names, and natural landmark names.
---Manmade landmark classes (the names of these features are often used in addresses and therefore generally within the scope of this standard): airport, bridge, building, canal, cemetery, church, crossing, dam, harbor, hospital, levee, locale, military, mine, oilfield, park, post office, reserve, reservoir, school, tower, trail, tunnel, well.
---PlaceName classes (the names of these features are generally Place Names within this standard): Census, civil, populated place.
---Natural landmark classes (the names of these features are generally outside the scope of this standard): arch, area, arroyo, bar, basin, bay, beach, bench, bend, cape, cave, channel, cliff, crater, falls, flat, forest, gap, glacier, gut, island, isthmus, lake, lava, pillar, plain, range, rapids, ridge, sea, slope, spring, stream, summit, swamp, valley, woods.
The complete feature class definitions can be found from the GNIS Domestic Names search page. See Appendix A (U.S. Geological Survey) for a complete citation.
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