Before Michigan’s highways crisscrossed the landscape, there were the trails — narrow, well-worn paths tread by generations of Native Americans.

This episode covers two well-known Indian trails in Michigan. The St Joseph Trail, which runs east-west from Ann Arbor to Niles, Michigan, and the Saginaw Trail, which starts in Detroit and ends in the former native American village known as Saginaw. Today, both of these former trials are now major highways and the location of the Detroit Dream Cruise.

These thoroughfares not only connected villages and trading hubs but later influenced the development of modern roadways across the state.

Learn how these trails carved the early infrastructure of Michigan and why their legacy is still felt today in the routes we travel daily.

A production of Thumbwind Publications