Paint Creek Trail: Michigan's first rail-trail

Michigan’s whole rail-trail movement started on this 8.9-mile stretch of crushed limestone between Rochester and Lake Orion. When the Penn Central pulled its tracks in the late 1970s, somebody had the then-novel idea to keep the corridor whole and lay a path on the old roadbed instead of selling it off in pieces. It opened in 1983 as the state’s first non-motorized rail-to-trail — the template for the hundreds of “rail-trails” that have since spread across the country.

The trade the railroad left behind is a good one. Because trains can’t climb, the grade stays nearly dead flat the entire length, which makes it as friendly to a stroller or a wobbly six-year-old as to a road cyclist who wants to move. The surface is firm crushed limestone — solid enough for skinny tires, soft enough to feel like a country lane underfoot. It threads through Rochester, Rochester Hills, Oakland Township, Orion Township, and the Village of Lake Orion, ducking under road bridges and over old railroad trestles.

The trail is named for the water it shadows. Paint Creek runs alongside much of the route, and it is the real surprise: a cold, spring-fed stream that holds wild brown trout — one of the only designated trout streams in heavily built-up southeast Michigan. On a quiet morning you will pass anglers working it from the bank within sight of subdivisions.

At its south end the path spills right into downtown Rochester and ties into the larger Clinton River and Macomb Orchard trail systems, so a casual out-and-back can turn into a much longer day if your legs agree. A commission of the towns it crosses keeps it groomed, the kind of shared upkeep that has kept this first experiment running for forty years.