Grand Traverse County Leads Effort to Preserve Native American Travel Route

Scott Buckmaster, identified as an artist helping preserve the path, is part of a local effort in Grand Traverse County to repair and preserve the Old Indian Trail, a historic route that runs from Lake Mitchell near Cadillac to West Grand Traverse Bay in Traverse City. The trail was marked in the 1980s with 33 markers intended to let people follow the route by car, and advocates say restoring those markers is central to keeping the route's cultural meaning visible to travelers.

The Old Indian Trail predates modern highways and linked communities across northern Michigan before roads such as M-115 and U.S. 131 existed. Regional descriptions place the route as stretching between Cadillac and Traverse City and note that it has been here for more than a thousand years, a timeframe preservationists cite when arguing for sustained protection of the markers and landscape it crosses.

Community members undertook the 1980s marking project that created 33 trail markers, with the specific purpose of allowing motorists to follow the historic corridor. Decades of weather and vandalism have left many of those markers damaged, prompting renewed work to repair, replace, or otherwise protect the signs that identify the Old Indian Trail to passersby.

Coverage in the region has highlighted both the trail and the people working to preserve it, with some accounts describing restoration work in active terms while local sources emphasize ongoing efforts to restore and preserve markers and cultural meaning. Organizers on the ground are focusing on physical repairs that enable drivers to trace the route from Lake Mitchell to West Grand Traverse Bay and on interpretive work that acknowledges the trail's Indigenous heritage, including links to Anishinaabe history identified in local reporting tags.

Scott Buckmaster framed the preservation effort as a reminder of what came before European settlement: "As far as today, to me it's just a reminder of our history and how this place truly started. How these people had built up this civilization prior to us Europeans moving into the area," said Scott Buckmaster. Buckmaster's involvement is cited specifically as part of the artistic and cultural work surrounding the markers.

The reporting that accompanies the preservation effort includes photographs, referenced in the material under filenames 00df38c3-f0a4-418c-ac2f-81b29a87b431.png, 787873bf-ee76-4702-8c78-8c8e392c6ebe.png, and 86b7bfa9-7051-44b7-b637-46e52a9b9f6e.png, and notes point to remaining questions that need confirmation: the current condition of all 33 markers, how many have been repaired or replaced, the exact nature of Buckmaster's role and affiliations, and whether tribal representatives are participating in preservation planning.

How those questions are resolved will determine whether motorists following the Old Indian Trail between Lake Mitchell near Cadillac and West Grand Traverse Bay in Traverse City encounter a continuous, restored sequence of markers and whether the route's Anishinaabe heritage is preserved and communicated for future generations.