Cable's Creek Trail

Summary

Cable’s Creek Trail is the short walk from a signed trailhead on the island’s east side over a footbridge to the public beach at Cable Bay. At 0.2 miles it is the shortest named trail in the archive, and the best signed.

It is also the trail whose bridge the archive can follow across three decades of township and survey records.

The route

No mapped geometry is held. OpenStreetMap carries Cable Bay, Cable’s Creek and Cable’s Creek Road, but no way of this name, and no GPS track covers it. What follows is published in a 2004 shoreline survey, walked in a 2019 guide, and walked again on a site visit in August 2026; it has never been mapped.

The 2019 guide turns east off East Side Drive about a quarter mile south of the Lake Geneserath access road, at a sign reading “Acccess Footbridge” — the spelling is the author’s — and a Beaver Island Birding Trail marker numbered 19. A gravel road runs about half a mile to a trailhead marked by a Footbridge sign, where there is parking. The trail crosses a short footbridge, rises and falls a little, and comes out on the Cable Bay beach, which the guide describes as sandy and running more than a mile to the south.

The bridge

The footbridge is the part of this trail with a paper trail. Peaine Township reported in October 1996, under a heading of Trails Report, that the Cable Bay Bridge would be rebuilt. The 2004 shoreline survey found that “Cable’s Creek enters at the north end and a bridge affords trail access,” and judged that the access “seems to be working well” and needed only monitoring. The 2019 guide crosses a short footbridge at the start of the walk.

A site visit on 19 August 2026 confirms the trail still crosses the bridge.

So the crossing is continuous in the record from 1996 to now: reported as township trail infrastructure in 1996, found to afford trail access in 2004, walked in 2019, and walked again in 2026. What is not established is whether the structure standing today is the one rebuilt in 1996 or a later replacement. Nothing in the archive dates the present bridge — that is a question about the timber, not about the route.

Access and ownership

This is the most straightforward access of any trail in the archive: a signed turn, a gravel road, a signed trailhead, parking at the trailhead, and a public beach at the far end. The 2004 survey treated the beach as a public shoreline tract and its verdict on the arrangement was that it should be left alone.

The beach carries Pitcher’s thistle and Lake Huron tansy, the tansy listed as threatened for its limited distribution. Both grow on open sand, which is where walkers spread out. Keep to the tread and the wet sand.

Evidence and limits

Three dated points across twenty-three years — 1996, 2004 and 2019 — which for a trail this short is unusually good. What is missing is any line: no geometry, no GPS track, no trail-association sheet, and no measurement of the trail other than the 2019 guide’s 0.2 miles.

The 2004 survey gives Tract 8 as 0.2 mile east–west by 0.15 mile north–south, a scale consistent with that figure but not a confirmation of it.

Added 20 August 2026. Recent changes