In 1867, goods for Gratiot and Isabella Counties were shipped from Detroit to St. Johns and then hauled by teams of horses to outlying settlements. To reduce transportation costs, citizens of Saginaw and Gratiot Counties chose to build a thirty-two-mile-long plank road connecting Saginaw and St. Louis. In 1869, the state legislature selected Saginaw lumbermen Ammi Wright and William Glasby to construct it, with Wright serving as president of the Gratiot Plank Road Company and Glasby as contractor. By 1870, farmers, merchants, and a stagecoach line traveled daily between Saginaw and St. Louis, and the road later became M-46. After the plank road was completed, Gratiot and Saginaw Counties sought a railroad, and in 1873 the Saginaw Valley and St. Louis Railroad Company laid tracks from Paines Junction to St. Louis alongside the plank road. The line made possible the export of agricultural and lumbering products and the import of needed supplies. In 1879, it was extended to Alma. By that year, parties in the Detroit, Lansing and Northern Railroad Company, which owned a majority of stock in the Saginaw Valley and St. Louis, had taken over the smaller line, which kept a separate title until 1897, when it merged with the Detroit, Grand Rapids and Western Railroad.