Pere Marquette Rail-Trail
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The Pere Marquette Rail-Trail is a 28-mile paved rail trail, located in both Midland County, Michigan and Isabella County, Michigan, along the former CSX Transportation railway that stretched from beyond Clare, Michigan to Saginaw, Michigan. The trail is either 12 or 14 feet wide, and is paved in asphalt.
[edit] History
The first portion of the trail was opened in June 1993 and dedicated on July 17 of the same year. This portion was almost wholly contained in the city of Midland, Michigan and started at The Tridge (as of 2006, The Tridge is still the current starting point of the official part of the trail). Mileage markers are located every half mile. As construction has progressed through the years, the trail has expanded to include service to the following locations (dates of service included in parenthesees):
- Averill (Midland County) (1994)
- Sanford (1994)
- North Bradley (Midland County) (1995)
- Coleman (1995)
- Loomis (2001)
[edit] Plans
The rail trail has had plans to extend west to Baldwin, Michigan, and then also as far as Ludington, Michigan. The ferry service could also be used to extend the trail westward into Wisconsin. More feasible plans of extending the rail trail through the city of Clare have surfaced in the past few years, where there is a connecting route through the city to the Pere Marquette State Trail, which may be converted and added into the rail trail.
