part of the US Highway System, and a section of the Interstate Highway System. Indian trail to state highway The chief transportation routes in 1701 were the Indian footpaths that crossed the future state of Michigan; the Grand River Trail was one of these thirteen trails at the time. In 1805, Detroit created rights-of-way for the principal streets of the city, Grand River Avenue included. This street plan was devised by Augustus Woodward and others following a devastating fire in Detroit. A ten-year project to construct a plank road between Detroit and Howell was authorized in 1820 along the Grand River Trail. Grand River Avenue was included as one of Five Great Military Roads by Governor Lewis Cass in 1825, along with the River Road, Michigan Avenue, Woodward Avenue and Gratiot Avenue. The Grand River Road, precursor to the modern Grand River Avenue was named by Benjamin Williams, cofounder of Owosso. The original Native American name for the river was meaning "the river that extends far off", or "far into the interior", which was translated as , the French name for the river; this name was then applied to the name of the trail that paralleled at least half of the river's length. The opening of the Erie Canal in New York in 1826 brought new settlers to the Great Lakes region, and to the future state of Michigan. Many of these settlers began their inland journeys in Detroit. At first the Grand River Road was a "deep rutted, ditch bordered road". The road branched into two at Rouge (now Redford); the southern branch roughly followed the modern route of Grand River Avenue and the northern route ran by way of Pontiac along Woodward Avenue and the modern M-21 to the north of the Lansing area. From Bancroft, several trails branched off, including the northern branch of the Grand River Road and the Saginaw Trail. The two branches merged back together near Dewitt and continued west toward Ionia and on to Grand Rapids and Newton (now Grand Haven). The early travelers plied the road in wagons pulled by oxen or horses, and drivers charged between four and seven cents a mile (equivalent to $–/mi in ). The horses were exchanged every with the speed averaging around with few obstacles. Congress further aided the road in 1835 with an appropriation of $25,000 (equivalent to $ in ) for a road on