1900 at the urging of the Detroit Wheelmen bicycle club. The legislature set up a state reward system for highways and created the State Highway Department with an office of Highway Commissioner. Earle was appointed by Governor Aaron Bliss. This appointment and department were voided when the attorney general ruled the law unconstitutional. A constitutional amendment was passed in 1905 to reverse this decision. The department was formed, and Earle was appointed commissioner by Governor Fred M. Warner on July 1, 1905. At first the department administered rewards to the counties and townships for building roads to state minimum specifications. In 1905 there were of roads in Michigan. Of these roads, only were improved with gravel and were macadam. The state's "statute labor system" was abolished in 1907. Under that system, a farmer and a team of horses could work on road improvements in place of paying road taxes. Instead a property tax system was instituted with the funding only for permanent improvements, not maintenance. The nation's first mile of concrete roadway was laid along Woodward Avenue between Six Mile and Seven Mile roads in Detroit. This section of street was 17 feet 8 inches (5.38 m) wide. Work began by the Wayne County Road Commission on April 2, 1909 and finished on July 4, 1909, at a cost of $13,354 (equivalent to $ in ). In 1913 voters elected Frank Rogers to the post of highway commissioner. This election was the first after the legislature made it an elective post. Automobile registrations surged to 20 times the level at the department's formation, to 60,438, and there were of roads built under the rewards system. Passage of the "State Trunkline Act" provided for of roadways with double rewards payments. Further legislation during the Rogers administration allowed for special assessment taxing districts for road improvements, taxation of automobiles based on weight and horsepower and tree-planting along highway roadsides. Another law allowed the commissioner to name all unnamed state roads. It also allowed for the posting of signage with the names and distances to towns. The centerline was first invented in 1911 in Wayne County by Edward N. Hines, and saw its first implementation on a state highway in 1917 along the Marquette-Negaunee Road, then M-15 and now County Road 492 in Marquette County. That same year, the first stop sign was put in place and the country's first "crow's nest" traffic