Greene’s Lake Trail

Road

Coordinates

45.6382° N, 85.5787° WGoogle Maps: Greene’s Lake TrailDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

trailstransportationrecreationModern eratoponymy

Within

Beaver Island

Summary

Greene’s Lake Trail is a trail name on the 2015 map and in the 2016 DNR trail report. Current OSM linework is named Greene’s Lake Road. This page shows that line only as an approximate, source-qualified proxy until the trail and road names can be reconciled.

Official map: Greene’s Lake / Johnny Martin’s Trail (BITA, July 2019).

What the trail sheets show

Peaine Township’s own narrative guide and the Beaver Island Trail Association’s July 2019 sheet describe different things under overlapping names.

The township’s 2021 guide treats “Greene’s Lake Road” as a short spur: “This may be accessed from West Side Drive or from Camp #3 Trail. It is 0.25 mile to Green’s Lake itself from West Side Drive, then another 0.78 mile east to the junction with Camp #3 Trail (total 1.03 miles). It is generally driveable.” The same guide describes Camp #3 Trail, Government Tower Trail and Middie Perron’s Trail as distinct routes.

The BITA sheet instead composites several of those routes under one name: “The Greene’s Lake Trail, also called Johnny Martin’s Trail, starts at East Side Drive about a mile South of Wagner Campground. It continues through Government Tower Trail, crossing Camp 3 Trail, and continues onto the Greene’s Lake Trail, which passes Greene’s Lake and ends at West Side Drive,” for a stated total of 5.5 miles. On the BITA sheet’s own account this “Greene’s Lake Trail” runs the course of Middie Perron’s and Government Tower before it ever reaches the lake — a composite route sharing a name with, and possibly identical in part to, Johnny Martin’s Trail.

This article does not resolve the conflict, following docs/trail-articles.md. The short lake-access spur the township calls Greene’s Lake Road is the route this article’s geometry approximates; the longer composite route the BITA sheet calls by the same name is an open question below.

Access and ownership

The 2024 Peaine Township Parks and Recreation Plan’s asset table lists “Greene’s Lake Public Access” as Michigan DNR land leased to Peaine Township (“MDNR leased by PT”), for fishing — the access point at the West Side Drive end of the road/trail this article covers. The same plan’s goals section lists “increase and improve accessibility at Greene Lake Park” among its 2024–2028 waterfront objectives.

The Beaver Island Trail Association’s Greene’s/Martin’s sheet, which covers the longer composite route, states “This is a wilderness area. You may encounter impassable wet areas due to seasonal conditions,” and carries the association’s standard disclaimer that its maps are not official DNR maps and should not be relied on for complete accuracy, current as of July 2019.

There are no designated public ORV trails on Beaver Island (see Trails and trail-making).

As walked in 2019. a walked account contributed in 2019 reaches this trail from the east, by Johnny Martin’s Trail, and recommends against it: beyond a small meadow with a large culvert the tread is overgrown and uneven, was still damp in late August, and carries downed trees, so ‘it may be better to access the Green’s Lake Trail from the western end if that is an important part of the hike.’ The spelling is the author’s.

Evidence and limits

This trail is published — in the 2015 map, the 2016 DNR trail report and the 2021 township guide — though, as above, the two most detailed sources describe different lengths of route under the name. It is mapped only approximately: current OpenStreetMap carries “Greene’s Lake Road,” not a feature explicitly named “Greene’s Lake Trail,” so the geometry shown here is a proxy and geometry_status is approximate. No GPS track or LiDAR search held here is tagged to this route, so it is neither walked nor searched in the archive’s sense.

Map status

The map uses a simplified OSM Greene’s Lake Road line retrieved 2026-08-02; it is not evidence that every road segment is hiking trail. Pending update: compare the line with the Peaine trail-description packet or a field GPS track and replace the proxy with a confirmed route (or mark unresolved).

Documented associations

No source-confirmed non-road entity is linked yet. Exact-name research leads remain in scripts/audit_road_links.py; a name collision is not treated as a road association.

Research status

The local newspaper and website corpus contains exact-name mentions in 0 file(s). Those files are research leads; the relation layer is added only when the surrounding source text establishes that the record involves this road.

Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes