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Page 87 J.A.W. IGLEHART CELEBRATES 40 YEARS ON THE GREAT LAKES As the automobile replaced the horse and carriage, highway transportation also underwent changes. In 1905, the Michigan State Highway Department was created and shortly thereafter, the state began licensing car owners in order to fund new road construction. Henry Ford would begin production of the Model T in 1908, producing 15,000,000 vehicles by 1927. To meet the transportation needs in the Great Lakes region, seven men: J.B. Ford, E.L. Ford, George R. Ford, B.F. Berry, George B. Morley, S.T. Crapo and H.J. Paxton organized the Huron Portland Cement Company in November, 1906. The principal plant would be built in Alpena, MI with future distribution plants built in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Oswego, Muskegon, St. Joseph, Saginaw, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Duluth-Superior and Toledo. In the beginning, transportation on the lakes was time consuming as cement was loaded into bags and stacked in the ship's cargo hold. With the purchase of the Str. SAMUEL MITCHELL in November, 1915, S.T. Crapo decided to ship cement as bulk cargo. The MITCHELL was converted to a self-unloading cement carrier at the S.C. McLouth Shipyard in Marine City, MI and completed in September, 1916. She departed the shipyard to load cement in Alpena and arrived at the new Detroit distribution plant on October 4th with the first cargo of bulk cement. Unloading took forty-three hours initially, but machinery changes greatly reduced unloading time by the end of the season. The fleet expanded to six vessels by the late I960's. Several were built at Great Lake shipyards, S.T. CRAPO-GLEW, 1927, E.M. FORD -Clev. J.A.W. IGLEHART Photo by Emory A. Massman