Ten years later, the Iowa General Assembly passed a primary road bill which shifted the responsibility of road maintenance from associations to Iowa's 99 counties. At the same time, route numbers were applied to the new primary highway system; the Blue Grass Route was designated Primary Road No. 8. In 1925, confusion between route associations and nascent state highway systems led to the creation of the U.S. Highway System. Primary Road No. 8 was replaced by U.S. Highway 34 the next year. Paving of the highway was completed in 1930; US 34 was the first road in Iowa to be completely paved. Work began in the 1950s to modernize Iowa's highway system, mostly by straightening and widening the original highways built in the 1930s. By the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s, sections of US 34 were identified as parts of important corridors that required expansion to four lanes. Construction on the eastern and western sides of the state, in Burlington and Glenwood, respectively, did result in parts of the highway becoming four lanes, other highway projects were cut back during the 1970s recession. At Glenwood, the discovery and handling of Native American remains led to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. In the mid 1990s, the Iowa Department of Transportation began an ambitious project to expand seven important corridors, one of which connected Des Moines to Burlington. The portion of US 34 between Ottumwa and Burlington was finished in 2008 when the bypass of Fairfield opened. At both state line crossings, modern bridges capable of handling four-lane, high-speed traffic, were built to replace old and obsolete truss bridges. The Great River Bridge opened in Burlington in 1994 and the US 34 Missouri River Bridge replaced the Plattsmouth Bridge in 2014. The Blue Grass Route, also called the Blue Grass Road, was a route that connected Council Bluffs and Burlington. The road closely followed the mainline of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). Charles H. Thomas of Kent suggested the road's name because it traversed through, as he saw it, "the finest blue grass region of the country". The route was first organized in 1910 by Joe Long, a newspaper man from Osceola started to publicize the road's new moniker. Long organized the first committee meeting of residents along the route who were interested in promoting their highway and in good roads in general. In official trips along the route, the Iowa Blue Grass Road Association spoke to at least 10,000 people about the goals of the group and collected $40,000 (equivalent to $ in dollars) for the purpose of improving the road.