Middie Perron’s Trail

Road

Coordinates

45.6304° N, 85.5619° WGoogle Maps: Middie Perron’s TrailDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

trailstransportationrecreationModern eratoponymy

Within

Beaver Island

Media

Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision

Summary

Middie Perron’s Trail (also written Middle Perron’s Trail) is a named route in the 2015 map, 2016 DNR report, and current OSM. Its map uses the two current OSM named segments. It is remembered in the 1995 Beaver Beacon for its apple trees and a vanished drive-through barn recalled as the island’s “only covered bridge.”

Official map: Middie Perron’s Trail (BITA, July 2019).

What the route was

The township’s own narrative guide calls Middie Perron’s Trail, Government Tower Trail, Camp #3 Trail and Greene’s Lake Road “former functional roads,” drivable in stretches with a high-clearance vehicle when dry, that “make great hiking and even better biking trails.” It runs south from the Fox Lake Road/Hannigan’s Road intersection as a two-track, meets Government Tower Trail at 1.73 miles, and “somewhere in the next 0.5 mile” the road becomes Johnny Martin’s Trail. Past that point it crosses swampy ground where logs have been laid across the track to allow ORV passage.

Points of interest

The 1995 Beacon trail-network inventory recalls the trail for its apple trees and a drive-through barn, since gone, that islander Bob Malloy remembered from a childhood buggy ride as the “Island’s only covered bridge.” No source in the archive gives the barn’s location or the date it disappeared.

Map status

Geometry is mapped from OSM retrieved 2026-08-02. Pending update: verify trail condition and alignment against a current official or field track.

Access and ownership

The trail is published and mapped but not documented as walked with GPS in this archive. BIATA’s own sheet carries the standing disclaimer:

“BIATA Trail Maps are not official DNR maps. They were prepared as an imperfect visual guide for the user and should not be relied upon for complete accuracy. Trails can become overgrown and unrecognizable in many areas.”

No source in the archive states who owns the ground the trail crosses. The 2019 township signage program and BITA’s 2019 trail sheet both describe routine maintenance and marking, not a legal right of way, and the trail’s 1990s-era description as a “functional road” — a former way for reaching property, not a purpose-built recreational path — matches the general pattern BIATA records for the island’s trail network.

As walked in 2019. a walked account contributed in 2019 puts the trailhead at the Fox Lake Road / Hannigan Road intersection and warns there is no parking at the trailhead, so a walker has to find a place off one of the two roads. It gives the trail as about 1.75 miles end to end, running to the Johnny Martin’s / Greene’s Lake trail.

That account spells the name Middle Perron’s. The trail association’s sheet and the township both use Middie. The variant is recorded here rather than corrected.

Evidence and limits

Published: named on the 2015 map, in the 2016 DNR trails report, in the township’s narrative guide, and on BITA’s July 2019 sheet — the fullest published record of any trail in this group. Mapped: two current OSM named ways, geometry_status: mapped, though volunteered rather than surveyed. Walked: not documented here; the archive holds no GPS track or recent field account of trail condition, so whether the swampy stretch described in the township guide is presently passable is unverified.

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