Sacramento grew interconnected with nearby cities like San Francisco, Chico, and Stockton as the automobile continued to grow in popularity; the first bus route in the city opened in between Sacramento and Folsom in 1910, prior to World War I, and, three years prior, the passage of a bond issue made possible the pavement of roads interconnecting settlements in Sacramento County. Wisconsin and Illinois native Arthur Serviss Dudley, who was elected as the executive secretary of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, set the city to host the Days of '49 festival in 1922 as a means to convince the city to unite in efforts for urban improvement. A 1915 proposal to filtrate the impure Sacramento tap water passed, and president Calvin Coolidge ceremoniously activated the purification system from Washington, D.C. in 1923. The same year, Sacramento voters approved the creation of SMUD, or the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a publicly owned utility company which competed with the privately owned Pacific Gas and Electric and Great Western Utility companies.