Michigan's first paved rail-trail

The City of Hart marks the north end of a trail with a special place in Michigan history. The William Field Memorial Hart-Montague Trail State Park, to give it its full name, was the first paved rail-trail in the state, and it runs about twenty-two miles south from Hart to the town of Montague, rolling through farms, orchards, and woods the whole way.

The word “paved” keeps the history straight. Michigan DNR calls the Haywire Grade Trail the state’s first rail trail overall and Paint Creek Trail its first nonmotorized rail-trail. Hart-Montague came later, but it was the first to turn an old rail corridor into a paved trail.

It exists because one man wouldn’t let it slip away. The route was once a railroad line, built in the 1870s and finally abandoned when the tracks were pulled up in 1982. A fruit grower and county commissioner from Shelby named William Field tried to talk the county into buying the old corridor for a trail. When they wouldn’t, he bought it himself and handed it to the state. The northern stretch opened in 1989, the rest followed two years later, and years afterward the legislature named the whole trail in his honor.

Today it’s smooth, flat, and easy, used all year by cyclists, runners, walkers, and snowmobilers when the snow piles up. New trails built southward have even linked it all the way to Muskegon, so you can ride from Hart to the city without ever leaving a bike path. The state runs it as a park, and trail maps and trailhead parking are easy to find through the Michigan DNR.