owner." Two years later, the Legislature readopted the tax and Groesbeck signed it into law, effective in 1926. It added $5 million a year in new revenue. Rogers was given complete authority for planning, building and maintaining trunklines, a responsibility previously shared with the counties. Tighter control over routes removed that part of road building from politics and relieved counties of property taxes for roads.
The burden eased further in 1927 with adoption of a three-cent levy on a gallon of gasoline. From then on, state trunklines were built with concrete or asphalt; no more macadam, sand, clay or gravel. The department went into force-account work on highways, bidding on road projects in competition with private contractors. If its bid was low, it got the job. It used convict labor to pound stakes and place cement and purchased a plant in Chelsea for cement supply—in reprisal against the cement trust, which had jumped prices to the department on force-account projects. Counties were obligated to buy cement from the state until the plant was sold in 1929.
Michigan in the 1920's drew national recognition for its highway programs. It built nearly 2,000 miles of hardsurface roads, the most in the nation, and improved about 6,500 miles of trunklines. The highway department completed the first concrete trunk line across the state—M-16, later changed to US-16—linking Detroit and Grand Haven. The date the last segment was opened, roadbuilders proudly noted the new highway was 20 feet wide and between seven and nine inches thick. That compared with the previous standard of 16 feet six inches and six inches of concrete.
Other important developments those years included:
- Construction of the nation's first "super-highway," an eight-lane divided thoroughfare running 18 miles between Detroit and Pontiac along
State officials camped on the site when they made an inspection tour of state trunkline construction in Lenawee County prior to World War I.
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