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Woodward Avenue. It led to construction of a network of multi-lane highways developed under a master plan for the Detroit metropolitan area.
In 1925, the Michigan Highway Department became the first in the country to utilize aerial surveys for route location and engineering. Talbert "Ted" Abrams began the service, still in operation today.
- Michigan’s was the first state highway department to correlate soils characteristics with highway design and construction, starting in 1925. The same year it became the first to use aerial surveys for highway design when Abrams Aerial Survey Co. of Lansing took photos of a planned route between Benzonia and Beulah.
- At the instigation of Gov. Fred W. Green, a former Ionia County road commissioner, Michigan developed the yellow line to indicate no-passing zones on sight-restricted hills and curves.
- Allen Williams, Ionia County Road Commission engineer-manager, designed and placed the nation’s first roadside picnic tables on US-16, an effort that helped promote Michigan's status as a leading tourist state. It followed by 10 years the opening of the nation’s first roadside park, developed along US-2 by Herbert Larson, engineer-manager of the Iron County Road Commission.
- Twenty-six road contractors formed the Michigan Road Builders Association in 1928, joining forces to develop standard specifications and contract procedures and raise the level of professionalism in their industry.
- Systems of uniform sign and traffic lights were put in place to smooth traffic flow and improve driving safety for the 1.2 million autos and 176,000 commercial vehicles registered in 1929. The total had increased nearly 500 percent in just 10 years.
Between 1905 and 1930, Michigan built a serviceable network of highways on what once were Indian paths, military roads, wagon roads, plank roads and farm-to-market roads. The age of mud was over; the age of concrete was moving in.
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