Beaver Island ArchiveA primary-source archive & encyclopedia45°40′N 85°33′W · Lake Michigan
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Road

Hemlock Trail

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

Locator map: Hemlock Trail highlighted within the Beaver Island archipelago
Locator plate © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); depths NOAA; names USGS GNIS. How the plates are drawn.
TypeRoad
Coordinates45.7497° N, 85.5515° WGoogle MapsDownload KML
WithinBeaver Island archipelago
ErasModern era
On this page
Locator map: Hemlock Trail highlighted within the Beaver Island archipelago
Locator plate © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); depths NOAA; names USGS GNIS. How the plates are drawn.
Road
Intersects
Tamarack Trail · White Cedar Trail
Coordinates
45.7497° N, 85.5515° WGoogle MapsDownload KML
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
transportationtoponymy
Within
Beaver Island archipelago

Summary

Hemlock Trail is a named road on Beaver Island’s current OpenStreetMap map. One held way carries that name, and its geometry is the whole route: about 290 m. It meets two other named roads, listed under intersects_road. Despite the name, this is a platted street in the Port St. James subdivision rather than a recreational trail: it carries “Trail” as a street suffix alongside neighboring Tamarack Trail and White Cedar Trail, and it is not tagged with the trails concept for that reason (see Trails and trail-making).

Evidence and limits

The name and the alignment are what mappers last entered, and OpenStreetMap is volunteered work rather than a survey: it settles neither the right-of-way nor who maintains the road. Where the name came from is a separate question. Plats, road-commission minutes, and island memory answer that one. Put an older spelling from any of them into alt_names or former_names, with the source that attests it.

Access and ownership

No source held here documents who platted Hemlock Trail or dedicated the right-of-way, and the archive holds no road-commission item naming it specifically, unlike the 1998–99 Charlevoix County Road Commission record for White Cedar Trail. The current county parcel snapshot places its lots’ legal descriptions under “PORT ST. JAMES #8” and carries the road without the “(PVT)” private-road flag the same snapshot gives Chipmunk Trail, which is consistent with public status but is not itself an ownership record.

Open questions

  • No road-commission record names Hemlock Trail specifically — was it dedicated to the public at the same time and by the same process as neighboring White Cedar Trail (1998–99), or through some other, unrecorded action?
  • When was the Port St. James #8 plat recorded, and does its record document the street naming for Hemlock, Tamarack, and White Cedar Trails together?
  • The absence of a “(PVT)” flag is read here as consistent with public status — could that instead reflect an inconsistency in the county’s data entry rather than a real difference in ownership from Chipmunk Trail? A title search or road-commission record would settle it.

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

Documented associations

These source-backed records provide context for the mapped route:

  • Port of St. James subdivision — The Port of St. James subdivision is a late-1960s summer residential development on Beaver Island. The Port of St. James Association describes more than 1,000 properties, shared beaches and recreation facilities, and protective covenants. The dated county parcel snapshot provides a useful road-level bridge: its Port-of-St.-James plat labels co-occur with…

Research status

The local newspaper and website corpus contains exact-name mentions in 3 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.

Maps for this place

These Atlas plates provide regional context. They do not establish a precise boundary, current ownership, access right, operating status, or field condition.

  • EnvironmentSoils, wetlands, hydrography, and terrain
  • GeologyGeneralized geology and landforms
  • HydrologyMapped water and wetland context
  • AccessMapped routes, facilities, and protected areas
  • Land surveyPLSS geometry and historic GLO patent-location context

Sources

  1. Current mapped road name 'Hemlock Trail'; grouped OSM way ids: 17758012. This is a volunteered map record, not a surveyed right-of-way or proof of historical naming.
    osm · roads
  2. Described in this archive: Current named-feature and property join records.
    Current parcel rows carry the road-name field 'HEMLOCK TRL', without the '(PVT)' private-road flag the same snapshot gives Chipmunk Trail (see place/chipmunk-trail), and legal descriptions reading 'PORT ST. JAMES #8 LOT n'. It is not a title search or ownership record, and the archive holds no road-commission item naming Hemlock Trail specifically (compare place/white-cedar-trail).
    county · charlevoix · parcels_arcgis · 2026-08-01 · island_parcel_attributes

Added 2 August 2026 · revised 16 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Hemlock Trail”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/places/hemlock-trail/, accessed [date], citing OpenStreetMap contributors, roads via Overpass API, retrieved 2026-08-01 (ODbL 1.0). (and 1 further source listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-16. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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