farm-to-market roads. There was a reason: many farmers still believed the auto would meet the fate of the buffalo and the support of the rural population was important to the success of state programs in the rural-dominated Legislature.
Horses pulling a primitive grader was a standard maintenance technique for Michigan roads in the "Age of Mud."
Ely ably used the department to promote more and better roads. From the outset of his four-year term he developed a communications clearing-house for local roadbuilders, using his staff, with Frank Rogers as the deputy and chief engineer, and the massive collection of information compiled in the Earle administration. He was keenly interested in researching road problems, prompting the department to issue semi-technical bulletins on such subjects as "Care of Earth Roads" and "The County Road System." In 1912, the University of Michigan established the nation's first state highway testing laboratory, where materials used in road work were tested for quality. The university also hired its first instructor in highway engineering.
Michigan was then well launched on its love affair with the automobile. Henry Ford had built his first one in Detroit in 1896 and R. E. Olds erected the nation's first automobile factory in 1899, also in Detroit. Then came Buick Motor Co. in 1901, followed by Ford Motor Co. in 1903 and Hudson Motor Car, Inc., in 1909, all in Detroit. Other lesser-known, often short-lived manufacturers entered the competition. In 1908, Ford introduced the model T, a car he said "every man earning a good salary can afford." The same year William C. Durant's Buick Company produced nearly 8,500 cars at the world's largest automobile factory at Flint. The price was not yet within the reach of the ordinary working man, but the number of owners was growing rapidly and all of them became backers of good roads for their vehicles to travel on.
Motorists also organized themselves into automobile clubs, starting with the Automobile Club of Detroit,
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