Paint Creek Trail's North End Gains a New Trailhead

For most of the last two decades, if you wanted to walk the quiet end of the Paint Creek Trail near the Oakland Township and Orion Township line, you learned to park on Dutton Road. Not in a lot. On the road, where there was room for maybe two cars if everyone was polite about it. The official options weren't much better: a small lot at Silverbell, a gravel patch near the Cider Mill on Gallagher Road. None of it was built for volume. The north end of the trail has long been a quieter stretch, with limited parking and a somewhat less convenient approach.

Access is changing. This year brought two changes that are making the north end of Paint Creek Trail easier to discover. This fall is a good time to enjoy the trail, whether it is already familiar or new to you.

The State Noticed What Locals Already Knew

As C&G Newspapers reported, the Paint Creek Trail was named a Pure Michigan Trail by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources this spring, joining a list of only about ten other trails statewide with that designation. The award was presented to the Paint Creek Trailways Commission at the Pure Michigan Governor's Conference on Tourism in Grand Rapids in April. MDNR State Trails Coordinator Tim Novak, who helps oversee the designation, called it about as quintessential a Michigan trail experience as exists, and said the trail earns the honor through consistent maintenance and easy access for all kinds of users.

That kind of praise is not just a plaque. Pure Michigan Trail status means the trail now gets folded into official Pure Michigan maps and statewide tourism marketing, with new signage carrying that branding installed at trail access points. Trailways Commission Chairwoman Martha Olijnyk framed it as one more reason people across the state might make the trip specifically to walk this stretch of woods and prairie north of Rochester. The trail also has new leadership this year: Tom Correll took over as manager in May, following Melissa Ford, who ran the trail for the previous five years.

None of this changes what the trail is. It's still 8.9 miles of crushed limestone following Paint Creek, one of the state's cold-water trout streams, through fields and wetlands between Rochester and Lake Orion. The designation also brings wider statewide attention to the trail.

A New Trailhead Opens at the North End

The state designation would matter less if getting to the trail's north end still meant a lucky spot on Dutton Road. It doesn't anymore. As C&G Newspapers reported, Oakland Township opened a trailhead earlier this year at Paint Creek Junction Park, on a parcel at 2210 Orion Road that the township's Parks and Recreation Commission bought in 2003 and that remained undeveloped for over twenty years.

A township official explained the gap plainly in an interview with C&G Newspapers:

"We have the parking at Gallagher Road, which is basically at the Paint Creek Cider Mill, and we have a tiny parking lot at Silverbell, and we have a pseudo lot on Dutton Road that is only for a couple of cars too, so we've never had, within our township, a really good parking area at the north end."

The new trailhead includes real parking, restrooms, a picnic area, and a water source, connecting the Paint Creek Trail to both Bald Mountain State Recreation Area and Marsh View Park. It's part of a broader set of connections designed by PEA Group, which also built a 1.1-mile pathway along the Gallagher Road corridor and a direct pathway connection to the Cider Mill itself.

Here's the part worth knowing if you follow how these projects get paid for: the whole trailhead project ran around $400,000, and the township only covered somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000 of that. The rest came from a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grant, Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Legacy Funds, and the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan. The project combined a township contribution with outside funding to create a new trailhead.

Two Cider Mills, a Quarter Mile Apart

If you're timing a fall walk on the trail, the mill stretch is still the payoff, and it's a stretch most visitors from outside the township don't realize has two separate destinations. Paint Creek Cider Mill sits at 4480 Orion Road, in the small unincorporated village of Goodison, and Goodison Cider Mill is just a quarter mile away. Both have been pressing cider and serving donuts in this same corridor for decades, under different ownership and different histories, close enough that you can walk from one to the other without leaving the creek.

As Rochester Media reported, the Paint Creek Cider Mill building has a longer story than most visitors know. The current structure went up starting in 1958, replacing an original 1835 gristmill built by Col. Needham Hemingway, and some of the old mill's hand-hewn timbers were salvaged and worked into the new building's corner supports. Ray Nicholson bought the property in 1996 and donated it to the township in 2005, which is why the upper floor now houses the offices of Oakland Township Parks and Recreation, the Historic District Commission, the Paint Creek Trailways Commission, and Six Rivers Land Conservancy, all stacked above a working café that still serves lunch, dinner, cider, and donuts most of the year. The ground floor also has a retail bay that's currently sitting empty, a small detail, but one more sign that a building this central to the trail still has room to change.

Seasonal Events in Oakland Township

Two Oakland Township Parks and Recreation events add to the local calendar. Goodison Good Tyme returns every September at Bear Creek Nature Park with live music, games, crafts, and bounce houses, free to attend. And the township's Music in the Meadows concert series runs across the summer in three parts, splitting its evenings between Bear Creek Nature Park and the Cranberry Lake Farm Historic District, a rotating lineup of local acts that changes every year.

Worth remembering: Paint Creek Trail is only one ribbon in a bigger network. The township maintains more than 20 miles of trails across its parks, most of which never show up in any statewide marketing push, Pure Michigan or otherwise.

What This Means for the Next Few Months

The trail offers several ways to plan a fall visit:

• For a quieter walk along the mill corridor, consider a weekday visit.
• The new Paint Creek Junction Park trailhead adds parking at the north end and provides another access point to the trail.
• The stretch south toward Rochester runs through quieter marsh and prairie sections.

The creek, prairie restoration along its banks, and nearly two centuries of mill history remain part of the trail experience. The new trailhead and statewide designation are helping more visitors discover it.

If Paint Creek Trail's evolution has you thinking about what's next for your own address in Oakland Township, whether that's more space, a different lot, or simply understanding what your property is worth in a market shaped by exactly this kind of local momentum, Realty Solutions of Michigan is a call away. Get a Free Home Valuation and let's talk about what a changing neighborhood means for your next move.