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

White Birch Road

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

Locator map: White Birch Road highlighted within the Beaver Island archipelago
Locator plate © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); depths NOAA; names USGS GNIS. How the plates are drawn.
TypeRoad
Coordinates45.7442° N, 85.5576° WGoogle MapsDownload KML
WithinBeaver Island archipelago
ErasModern era
On this page
Locator map: White Birch Road 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
Donegal Bay Road · Stephan Court
Coordinates
45.7442° N, 85.5576° WGoogle MapsDownload KML
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
transportationtoponymy
Within
Beaver Island archipelago

Summary

White Birch Road 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 874 m. It meets two other named roads, listed under intersects_road.

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.

Open questions

  • Is White Birch Road a public Charlevoix County road, or does it remain unclassified? No Road Commission record naming it has been found here, unlike the 1998-99 seasonal-status case held for White Cedar Trail.
  • Who named the road, and for what — a stand of white birch, a person, or a subdivision-era convention? No source held here says.

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 St. James completes a walking trail from White Birch Road to Little Font Lake, 1980 — By August 1980, the Port St. James Association reported completion of a roughly half-mile walking trail from the end of White Birch Road, beside the Old Stables Campground, to Little Font Lake and back. The report says the trail included plant-identification signs and benches. The source establishes the reported 1980 trail project and its road access, but…
  • Coggins Trail — Coggins Trail is a current mapped trail near the northwestern St. James road network. The held OSM line meets White Birch Road and Woodridge Court, providing the first structured cross-links for those access points. No held source identifies the trail’s namesake, construction date, or legal access…
  • Katherine's Climb Trail — Katherine’s Climb Trail is a current named trail in the White Birch Road area. The OSM route provides a map-ready trail entity and a direct road link, while the person or history behind the name remains undocumented in the held sources. This is a clean negative finding rather than an oversight: the corpus was searched and no “Katherine” was found connected…
  • Little Font Lake Trail — Little Font Lake Trail is a short walking trail off White Birch Road near the Old Stables Campground, leading to Little Font Lake. An August 1980 Beacon report describes it as newly completed, about half a mile, with plant-identification signs and benches; a December 2006 letter from…

Research status

The local newspaper and website corpus contains exact-name mentions in 2 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 'White Birch Road'; grouped OSM way ids: 17759241. This is a volunteered map record, not a surveyed right-of-way or proof of historical naming.
    osm · roads

Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “White Birch Road”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/places/white-birch-road/, accessed [date], citing OpenStreetMap contributors, roads via Overpass API, retrieved 2026-08-01 (ODbL 1.0)..

Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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