The original Three Oaks railroad station still stands on Heritage Trail U.S. Highway 12. It will soon house Blais, the studio, gallery and retail store of interior designer Keek Bielby. Photo by Terri Gordon

In an almost straight line across southern Michigan, from Lake Erie east to Lake Michigan, U.S. Highway 12 follows the track once known as the Great Sauk Trail, named for the tribe of native Americans by the same name, who used it, travelling from their home in Wisconsin, to collect annuities from British forces stationed just east of Detroit.

But the trail was well-established by then. Fur traders had already discovered the network of paths that connected to each other and to the main corridor that would eventually hold U.S. Highway 12 through Michigan.

Local tribes had long been using the natural break between the forests and the prairies for seasonal migrations and for hunting.  Even then, the path was hardly new.

Paleontologists have unearthed evidence the trail was used, perhaps blazed, by the mastodons that traversed the territory some 10,000 years earlier.

The Chicago Road, another of the names for the road connecting the Great Lakes of Michigan, was officially completed for use as a military road. The 209-mile-long road was the first major route connecting Detroit and Chicago. It was designated U.S. Highway 12 on May 24, 1825. Before long, a stage coach line was running two trips a day between Detroit and Chicago.

When the railway came through in 1849, it lay parallel to U.S. Highway 12. The towns that had sprouted along the highway now boomed as the railroad shipped their timber and  goods to market.

Trains also brought tourists.  Where the railroad line from the east ended in New Buffalo, restaurants and hotels sprang up to accommodate the influx of travellers. Once the track was extended on to Chicago, the commuter traffic slowed, though vacationers kept coming to New Buffalo and other resort towns along the route.

Highway 12 was finally paved in the early 1920s. Now, automobiles used the road. The road brought people from Chicago to the shores of southwest Michigan, where folks from the city came to weekend and vacation, and buy second homes. And then there were those passing through to Detroit, those coming from Detroit, going to Chicago.

Eventually, the Indiana Toll Road went in along the U.S. Highway 12 corridor — if loosely — diverting much of the traffic from route 12. Still, 179 years after becoming a road, US-12 remains an  important and historic transportation route.

The U.S. Highway 12 was designated an Historic Heritage Trail by Michigan Department of Transportation on June 9, 2004.

The highway passes locally through the towns of Niles, Galien and Three Oaks to New Buffalo, where it turns, following the lake south, through the exclusive resort communities of Grand Beach and Michiana, and out of Michigan, into Indiana, on through Chicago and west, coming to an end in Aberdeen, Wash.

Instead of being a jammed highway, it’s now a more leisure drive. There’s plenty to see along U.S. Highway 12. Burial mounds of past cultures can be located along the corridor, in Buchanan and Sumnerville, and Pears Mill in Buchanan is one of the oldest mills still in existence.

Examples of Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne and Gothic, the popular architectural styles in the late 1800s, are sprinkled throughout the towns along the trail. Many of  New Buffalo’s Whittaker Street shops sport turn-of-the century storefronts, and from a more contemporary era, Grand Beach is home to original Frank Lloyd Wright houses.

Niles is the oldest settlement in southwest Michigan; the Fort St. Joseph Museum chronicles its development. Once the seat of wealth for the area, it displays a wealth of architecture from the 1800s.

Since the railway followed U.S. Highway 12, many of the towns had train stations. The historic 1892 Niles Train Depot, listed in the National Register of Historical Places for its Richardsonian and Romanesque architecture, still functions as an Amtrak outlet.  The original Three Oaks railroad station still stands, soon to be the home of blais, the studio, gallery and retail store of interior designer Keek Bielby.

An exact replica of the New Buffalo’s Pere Marquette Railroad Depot holds the New Buffalo Railroad Museum, devoted to the town’s history, especially where the railroad was concerned.

Tourism still thrives in the little towns along, and surrounding, the U.S. Highway 12 Heritage Trail. Guests to the area find beaches, farm markets, wineries and art galleries. Eateries, quaint shops and bed-and-breakfasts abound along the way. With lake breezes and the hum of tires, Route 12 has something for everyone.