Grayling, Michigan sits on I-75 in the heart of northern Michigan's outdoor recreation country, but for years the small city of about 1,800 people has struggled to turn the millions of travelers passing through into visitors who actually stop. A new trail project aims to change that by physically connecting the town to the state recreational lands at its edge.
Using a $280,000 federal Surface Transportation Block Grant, the city, Grayling Township, and Crawford County are building a 1.8-mile non-motorized trail along M-72, running from the I-75 Business Loop east to the Rayburn MDNR Recreational Property. The path will include boardwalks and a bridge crossing over a tributary to Shellenbarger Lake.
To make room for the trail on the north side of M-72, the road will be reconfigured from four lanes to three lanes west of I-75. Road diets like this have become a common traffic safety tool: federal research consistently shows they reduce crashes by 19 to 47 percent while maintaining traffic flow. Similar projects elsewhere in the region have used the reclaimed road space to add bike and pedestrian infrastructure, as in Essex, Vermont's planned path along Route 15.
For Grayling, the stakes are economic as much as recreational. Crawford County's median household income hovers around $42,000, well below Michigan's statewide median, and the local economy relies heavily on tourism, the Au Sable River's world-famous trout fishing, and Camp Grayling, the largest National Guard training facility in the country. Attracting visitors who linger rather than pass through has been a persistent challenge, and trail connections to public lands are increasingly how rural Michigan communities compete for outdoor recreation dollars.
The project aligns with Michigan's broader goal of building a connected 10,000-mile statewide trail network, an initiative launched in 2019. The $280,000 federal share represents roughly 80 percent of the project's cost, with local funds covering the remainder. Construction timing has not been announced publicly.
