of right-of-way. These improvements included removing brush and debris and the construction of bridges across the Rouge, Shiawassee, Red Cedar and Grand rivers. The Grand River Road was a major route for settlers headed inland to Grand Rapids in 1836, as the shortest route for travelers coming from Detroit. An economic panic in 1837 drove settlers from New York to Michigan; these were the travelers who followed the Grand River Road. New settlements were created along the route, every or so, that distance being a good day's travel by horse. Approximately 120 wagons left Detroit each day between August and November 1843. After statehood in 1837, Michigan assumed the costs for construction work to the Grand River Trail. At that time, about had been surveyed from Detroit westward. The new state lacked the money to continue improvements to the road, and Michigan petitioned Congress for the better part of the next decade for money to complete the work. When the state capital was moved to Lansing in 1847, an improved road was needed to the capital city. The first segments of roadway were privatized starting in 1844. In 1850, the Michigan State Legislature established the Lansing and Howell Plank Road Company, which set about converting various Indian trails into the Lansing–Howell Plank Road, a task the company completed by 1853. At Howell the road connected with the Detroit–Howell Plank Road, establishing the first improved connection direct from the state capital to Michigan's largest metropolis. The Lansing–Detroit Plank Road was a toll road until the 1880s, and it eventually evolved into the eastern part of the modern Grand River Avenue. By 1900, only a short stretch of the Detroit–Howell Plank Road was still made of planks; most of the other plank roads had been converted to gravel by this time. On May 13, 1913, the Michigan Legislature passed the State Reward Trunk Line Highway Act (Public Act 334 of 1913) that created the original state highway system. In that act, Grand River Avenue between Detroit and Grand Rapids was included as Division 9 of the system. The state highways were signposted starting in 1919, and on the first maps published on July 1 of that year, the Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD) had applied the M-16 number to Grand River Avenue across the state between Grand Haven and Detroit. M-16 was rerouted in the Lansing area in 1925, running along Grand