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Beaver Island: the trails

TypeMap
ErasModern era
Map
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
trailscartographyrecreation
Map: Beaver Island trails, distinguishing what is walked, what is mapped,
Beaver Island: the trailsDrawn from the archive's own data in EPSG:3078. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); relief USGS 3DEP 2018 1 m bare-earth lidar (public domain); 1986 continuation from USGS Beaver Island South 1:24,000 (public domain); waypoints transcribed from the Beaver Island Trail Map, rev. October 2015. · CC BY 4.0 for the drawing; underlying data under its own terms (see credit)

The island’s trail network drawn by the evidence for each route rather than as a single line per trail. Four registers are kept visually distinct: routes walked at tread pace with a GPS in 2024-25 that OpenStreetMap does not carry; named and unnamed trail ways OpenStreetMap does carry; the Blue Trail, published by the township and the trail association but holding no mapped geometry at all, drawn as a waypoint chain rather than a centreline; and ground searched slowly where no tread was found.

Relief is the 2018 bare-earth lidar hillshade, which shows old grades and two-tracks the modern map omits. It is not a survey and not a navigational aid: the same method missed seven of the twelve GPS-confirmed runs, a mapped line and a walked track can differ by tens of metres with neither being wrong where the trail meanders around wetland, and walked GPS exists only at the south end.

Open questions

  • The Blue Trail is drawn as a waypoint chain because it holds no mapped geometry — would a tread-pace GPS walk of the full published route let it move from “published” to “mapped”?
  • The lidar hillshade missed seven of the twelve GPS-confirmed runs — has the pattern of misses been checked for a common cause, such as canopy cover or narrow tread, that would improve a future pass?

If you can answer any of these, or correct anything above, the archive wants to hear it — see Corrections.

Sources

  1. Archive-generated trail atlas plate.
    Drawn from the archive's own OpenStreetMap trail extract, the walked GPS tracks of 2024-25, the trail-review package, and USGS 3DEP 2018 1 m bare-earth lidar. Map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); relief and the 1986 quadrangle continuation are public domain.
    scripts · make_trail_map

Added 16 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island: the trails”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/map/atlas-beaver-island-trails/, accessed [date], citing Archive-generated trail atlas plate..

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