Last month, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources awarded almost a quarter of a million dollars to 15 Michigan counties to build the Iron Belle Trail. It’s a statewide loop made up of a hiking route (blue) and a biking route (red).
Jacqueline Baker is the communications coordinator in the DNR’s parks and recreation division. She says you can hike or bike on either trail, but each one is built specifically for that group.
“A cyclist might need less camping, you know, less frequent camping. They also have a different need for their surface. So I cyclist needs a very smooth surface, especially if they’ve got a road bicycle with very skinny tires because that’s going to improve their efficiency," Baker says.
"But a hiker might be ok with having a dirt path in some areas and might have different priorities in how they want their trail developed.”
Surprisingly, a lot of the Iron Belle Trail is already finished. That’s because it links up many of the state’s existing trails and public parks.
And when it’s done, it’ll link up to something much larger. The hiking portion of the trail will become part of the North Country Trail—a national scenic route that spans seven states, from New York to North Dakota.
Bruce Matthews is the executive director of the North Country Trail Association. He says plans for the trail have been in the works since 1980. The idea of the North Country Trail is to showcase the beautiful landscapes of each state. And Michigan has quite a few to choose from—which may be why it takes up the most miles of any state on the national trail.
“From the southern part of Lake Michigan up through the sand dunes of the western side of the state, up into what had been the logged-over areas of the central northern Lower Peninsula. The Mackinac Bridge and then of course the Upper Peninsula with all of its wonderful landscapes both in the interior…Tahquamenon Falls, Lake Superior, McCormick Wilderness. There’s just some tremendous landscapes to illustrate and tell the story of the people that live there and have lived there.”
Though Michigan’s portion of the trail, the Iron Belle, is about 60 percent complete, there’s still a lot of work to do. There are large gaps in the bike path in counties like Crawford, Roscommon, and Iosco.
Along the hiking route there are just a few. One of them is near the city of Jackson, which received a grant to plan a route that cuts right through the city’s downtown.
Kelli Hoover is the director of the city’s parks, recreation, and cemeteries department. She took me on a trail that loops around the Martin Luther King Community Center. For the most part it’s your typical running trail—nicely paved, peaceful. But then you turn the corner and end up at Cooper Street.
“We have about five lanes here. We have a community that lives here. We have houses that are close to the road. So there’s a lot to deal with,” says Hoover.
Hoover says, with the grant, the city plans to widen this path by two feet and push it back farther from the road. She says probably the biggest expense will be making existing trails like this safer.
“I’ve come to places where trails in a system and that they the end on a major road, similar to Cooper Street in which you have five lanes. You have your family with you and you’re trying to get four or five kids across safely at a light that may not have a pedestrian crossing that has heavy traffic, people turning. So I think those are always things that you need to look at and how can you make that better for the future.”
Hoover says expanding city paths will not only take money, it’ll take time. The trail runs through city parks and public land, but inevitably it will have to run through someone’s yard. The city has to convince each landowner along the way that this is the right move.
Bruce Matthews says that’s part of what has been slowing down work on the North Country Trail. The process moves a lot quicker in some areas than others.
“In the northern part of the country you know you have larger parcels, so you may have a landowner that owns 400 acres. So you’re talking to one landowner. In Hillsdale County for example you’ve got 40 landowners that own one acre," Matthews explains.
"And so, you know, you have to talk to all 40 and it’s a fairly hefty task. And again, not everybody is interested, so you kind of have to work around that.”
The Iron Belle Trail and part of the North Country Trail will connect to Kalamazoo County at Fort Custer Recreation Area.
