Walker Tavern and the old road to Chicago

Long before the highways, the way west out of Detroit was the Sauk Trail — a path worn by Native Americans that settlers later widened into the Chicago Road, the main stagecoach route between Detroit and Chicago. The trip took about five days, and travelers needed places to stop. One of them still stands in the Irish Hills: Walker Tavern, a little white farmhouse built around 1832 where the Chicago Road (now US-12) crosses M-50.

Today the tavern anchors Cambridge Junction Historic State Park, an 80-acre site run by the state. You can tour the old tavern, a reconstructed barn, and a 1920s visitors center that tells a second chapter of the story: once US-12 was paved in the 1920s, the Irish Hills became a favorite day-trip from Detroit, and a string of quirky roadside attractions sprang up along the highway — towers to climb, a “prehistoric forest,” frontier towns. Most are gone now, but the tavern keeps the whole history alive. It’s open May through October — find hours at Michigan’s Walker Tavern site.