No Street Addresses

Unwilling to see their village become "citified," Carmel's founding fathers rejected the practice of house- to-house mail delivery in favor of a central post office. To this day, while the city is finally in the process of assigning numbers to houses, there is still no mail delivery, parking meters or street lights, and no sidewalks outside of Carmel's downtown commercial area. Homeowners adorn their homes with legendary names such as "Hansel" or "Sea Urchin." It is, by the way, bad luck to change the name on a Carmel cottage.