Last Memorial Day weekend, we hosted a successful 5 K Run-3 K Walk on the Great American Rail-Trail at the trailhead on Starke County Road 700 East. With support from the Starke County Convention Visitors Commission, we’ll again be hosting the event at this location on May 24, 2025. Please join us!
Named for mid-19th Century counterfeiters, who operated from a stream bank "cave", until they were overtaken by revolver wielding officers. A tantrabogus was a machine that made counterfeit coins.
Another native species growing near the northern edge of its range is the Chickasaw plum (also know as the "sandhill plum"). The plant has white flowers in the spring and produces these showy red fruits as imaged in August 2024.
Last Memorial Day weekend, we hosted a successful 5 K Run-3 K Walk on the Great American Rail-Trail at the trailhead on Starke County Road 700 East. With support from the Starke County Convention Visitors Commission, we’ll again be hosting the event at this location on May 24, 2025. Please join us!
Erie Trail and Grand Kankakee Marsh Trail
The Prairie Trails Club Inc. (“the PTC”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission to advance, promote, and maintain greenways and blueways in northern Indiana. Its focus is support for the Erie Trail and approved Connectors. The trail extends eleven miles southeast from North Judson to Starke County Road 700 East near Bass Lake. The PTC is supported through private donations, grants, and membership dues. It has no paid staff, and volunteers are not compensated for services.
The Erie Trail is part of transAmerican routes the Great American Rail-Trail, the northern branch of the American Discovery Trail, and US Bike Route 35. Other completed sections of the Great American and American Discovery Trails are in Lake County, at Hebron, on the Nickel Plate Trail from Rochester, and the Cardinal Greenway in Muncie. US Bike Route 35 is intended for bicyclists adept with traffic on share-the-road streets and highways.
The Erie Trail is a free access, public multi-use path and green space. Motor vehicles are prohibited except for qualified e-bikes, emergency, maintenance, or ADA approved use. The route is paved and intended for hiking and bicycling. A separate, unpaved equestrian trail for horseback riding shares the corridor from Starke Road 100 West to Starke County Road 700 East. Another mile of trail is under construction in North Judson where the Erie Trail will become the Grand Kankakee Marsh Trail going north.
Located on a 100-foot wide corridor of the rail banked right-of-way for the former Erie Lackawanna Railroad, the level rail bed makes for easy hiking and cycling. Please be a good citizen and refrain from littering or trespass on neighboring properties.
The Starke County Commissioners have approved five paved share-the-road Connectors to facilitate access to the Erie Trail. These Connectors avoid routes with heavy motorized traffic.