Hines Park: seventeen green miles through the western suburbs

Western Wayne County’s defining amenity isn’t a mall or a freeway — it’s a river valley. Hines Park follows the Middle Rouge for 17.5 winding miles, linking some 25 recreation areas along Edward N. Hines Drive from Dearborn through Dearborn Heights, Westland, and Livonia out to Northville. Ballfields, fishing ponds, picnic groves, a paved bike path the whole way, and in December the “Lightfest” drive-through holiday light show that’s become a regional tradition. Summer weekends, stretches of the Drive close to cars entirely and fill with bikes.

The park has history in its bones, too: Henry Ford built a chain of small “village industries” mills along this river, and Nankin Mills in Westland — once one of them — now serves as the park’s interpretive center. The parkway is named for Edward Hines, the Wayne County road pioneer who gave the world the painted centerline. For homebuyers comparing the western suburbs, here’s the practical translation: nearly every community on this list touches the same continuous greenway, so a house near Hines Drive comes with seventeen miles of park out the door.