The city of Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, developed from a small fur trading post of New France to a world-class industrial powerhouse and the fourth largest American city by the mid 20th century. The city, settled in 1701, is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America. 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.