An Insiders Guide to Beaver Island Hiking Trails, 2019

Summary

An unpublished walking guide to ten Beaver Island trails, written by Michael Kamrin as a companion to the Wojan/Cashman island map and contributed by the author for publication here. It is the archive’s first substantial walked account of the island’s trails: turn-by-turn directions, where to leave a car, what the ground does underfoot, and estimated distances between landmarks.

The author opens by saying he first came to the island in the summer of 1969 and that this was his fiftieth consecutive summer.

Why it matters here

Most of what this archive holds about trails is published or mapped — association sheets, township guides, OpenStreetMap ways, plat lines. Almost none of it is the record of somebody walking the route and writing down what happened. Against thirty-two named trails, the ground truth held here is five GPS tracks, all at the south end.

This guide does not add geometry, and it should never be read as though it did: the distances are a walker’s estimates, not survey. What it adds is the thing the other registers cannot supply — whether a turn is findable, whether a trailhead is signed, whether the tread is wet in August.

The blaze key

The guide records how the trails are marked — blue diamonds, a white border, red paint, orange and yellow diamonds, and green diamonds on the utility poles of the main island road. That key is set down nowhere else in this archive, and because it is a fact about the trails rather than about this document it is carried on the hub: see How the trails are marked.

The guide also ties four trailheads to numbered Beaver Island Birding Trail markers, and lists public toilets at three trailheads.

What it is unfinished

Two entries were never written. Camp #3 Trail carries the heading Description : ? and no distances; Doty’s Camp Trail has both headings and nothing under either.

That is worth recording rather than tidying away. A walker of fifty summers left blanks in exactly the two places where this archive’s own evidence is thinnest, and where the July 2019 trail-association sheet turns out to describe a composite route rather than a single trail.

Evidence and limits

One author, one register, one season. The guide is not dated internally beyond the fiftieth-summer statement; the file was created on 8 August 2019 and last revised on 17 February 2020, so it describes the trails as they stood in the 2019 season and no later. The author states plainly that there is no regular trail maintenance and that conditions vary from year to year — so this is a record of one summer, not a current condition report.

Distances are estimates on foot. Where they can be checked against the township’s own guide they agree closely, which is a reason to take them seriously and not a reason to treat them as measurements.

Added 20 August 2026. Recent changes