officially with a ceremony on November 10, 1976, eleven years after it was first announced. Total cost for the project was $26 million (equivalent to $ in ), an amount considerably larger than the proposed $7.6 million. The next year, the Iowa Department of Transportation received approval from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to move US 34 onto the 534 freeway. Glenwood expressway On the other side of the state, a US 34 project near Glenwood was tied to construction of I-29. In late 1969, the Iowa Highway Commission announced its intention to relocate US 34 from the eastern junction of US 275 to an interchange along the new I-29. Once work on I-29 in the area was completed, the commission sought to work on the US 34 expressway. The exact routing, which was an approximately southern bypass of Glenwood that connected to I-29 west of the city, was announced in mid-1970. In 1971, during the grading phase of the project, highway workers found about twenty gravesites along with the skeleton of a Native American teenage girl. Archaeologists determined that the site was indicative of a white family cemetery from the 1850s. A district court judge ordered the highway commission to pay for the costs of moving the remains to the cemetery in Glenwood, while the native skeleton was taken to the state archaeology lab in Iowa City for analysis. Archaeologists and anthropology students were allowed to dig at the site for two months, which produced earthlodge sites and artifacts from the Glenwood culture. Maria Pearson, a Yankton Dakota woman, objected to the bones being taken to Iowa City, citing the Indian girl's "right to remain an Indian", even in death. Pearson threatened to hold an all-Indian protest at the state archaeologist's office until the girl's bones were reinterred. Pearson later said in a letter to the state archaeologist that reburial at the Glenwood Cemetery would be satisfactory since it was near where the remains were found. Pearson protested to Governor Robert D. Ray by gaining an audience with him after entering his office in traditional attire. When the governor asked what he could do for her, Pearson responded that he could give back her people's bones. The ensuing controversy led to the passage of the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first legislative act in the U.S. that specifically protected Native American remains.