A 47-mile trail laid over the rails that hauled the iron

For more than a century, trains carried iron ore east across this stretch of the Upper Peninsula — from the pits and shafts of Negaunee and Ishpeming down to the docks at Marquette, where freighters waited. The ore is mostly gone now, and the rails with it. What’s left is the grade they ran on, and you can walk it.

The Iron Ore Heritage Trail stretches 47 miles across the Marquette Iron Range, much of it following those old railroad corridors. It’s the kind of route the U.P. does well — flat where the trains needed flat, cutting past rock walls and through second-growth woods, stringing together Chocolay Township on Lake Superior with Marquette, then Negaunee and Ishpeming inland. Negaunee, where Michigan iron mining began, sits squarely on the line and makes a natural place to start.

It’s a year-round, all-comers kind of trail. Some stretches are smooth asphalt for bikes and strollers, some are crushed limestone, and some are left rough for snowmobiles and ORVs. In summer people bike, run, and birdwatch it; come winter the snow machines and cross-country skiers take over. Interpretive signs along the way explain what you’re standing on — which mine, which forge, which vanished company town — so the history isn’t just underfoot but spelled out.

The trail keeps growing, too. A non-motorized extension is being built east from the Kawbawgam Road end in Chocolay out to Lakenenland, the roadside sculpture park on M-28. A public authority, the Iron Ore Heritage Recreation Authority, looks after the whole thing. It’s a neat trick of reuse: the same path that once moved the ore that built American cities now moves people out for a walk on a Sunday.