The city of Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, settled in 1701, is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America.[3] Developing from a small sleepy New France fur trading post to a world-class industrial powerhouse and the fourth largest American city by the mid 20th century. In colonial times, with the city located on the opposite end of Lake Erie from the first 17th century North American colonies, it was first settled from the French Kingdom's New Orleans colony vice Montreal (founded 93 years earlier) after the Beaver Wars left the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Huron in the hands of the ever-hostile and powerful League of the Iroquois.[a] After a devastating fire in 1805, Augustus B. Woodward devised a street plan similar to Pierre Charles L'Enfant's design for Washington, D.C. Detroit's monumental avenues and traffic circles fan out in radial fashion from Campus Martius Park in the heart of the city, which facilitates traffic patterns along the city's tree-lined boulevards and parks.[5] Main thoroughfares radiate outward from the city center like spokes in a wheel.