Clark and Clarke

It's both a puzzlement and a predicament seemingly worthy of Sherlock Holmes' deductive mind. Well...that might be overstating the importance of this mystery just a tad. But as far as Saucon Valley riddles are concerned, it's significant.

Here's the situation... On the east side of Main Street in Hellertown there's a narrow side street named Clark Street. Simple enough, right? Not so fast.

On the west side of Main, the same street becomes Clarke Street. For some reason, once Main Street is traversed in a westerly direction, an 'e' is added to the name.

To add to the general confusion, if one looks up "Clark Street, Hellertown" on Google Maps the spellings are the reverse of what the street signs themselves indicate. So the portion of the thoroughfare east of Main Street is identified as "Clarke" (East Clarke to be exact). And the portion on the west side of Main Street is identified as "Clark" (you guessed it, West Clark!). 

This is confusing, and it's why we at Patch are asking...why is that?!?!