highway along the western part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and to increase tourism along the Lake Michigan shore. The auto trail was eventually superseded by US 12 and US 31 after the creation of the United States Numbered Highway System in 1926. In 2020, work began on the final link of the St. Joseph Valley Parkway to connect the US 31 freeway to I-94 east of Benton Harbor. The project cost $121.5 million and involved reconstructing the interchange with the eastern terminus of BL I-94 and of I-94 in the area. US 31 was rerouted to follow its new freeway section for from the previous end of the freeway at Napier Avenue that opened in 2003 to I-94 at BL I-94, where US 31 then followed I-94 to the I-196 interchange as before. This new routing opened on November 9, 2022. Memorial highway names As the original expressway through the center of Detroit was being planned in the 1940s, it was unofficially named the Harper–McGraw Expressway after the streets along which it was to run. There was some initial support to name it after Roy D. Chapin, the late president of the Hudson Motor Car Company and a former US secretary of commerce under President Herbert Hoover. On April 23, 1946, the Detroit Common Council voted instead to name the highway after Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford and president of the Ford Motor Company from 1918 until his death in 1943. Two other original sections of I-94's predecessor highways in the Detroit area were given early names. The westernmost of these is the Willow Run Expressway, named for the Willow Run complex. The plants at Willow Run produced B-24 Liberator bombers for Ford Motor Company during World War II. The second, the Detroit Industrial Expressway, continued the route of the Willow Run Expressway eastward into Detroit. Both highways were built to move workers from Detroit to the industrial plants at Willow Run during the war and were later incorporated into I-94 in the 1950s as part of a Detroit–Chicago highway. The section of I-94 northeast of Detroit was named after former Congressman James G. O'Hara by the Michigan Legislature. O'Hara was a World War II veteran who served in the US House of Representatives from 1959 until 1977. During his tenure in Congress, he procured federal funds for the construction of I-94 through his district. The