Named interpretive trails, tested

The register's test was whether this county's trails carry interpretation in their names and signage, or only distances. Tested park by park, three pass clearly. Ferrettie/Baugo Creek passes in print: its county trail map names the Portage Trail and prints its own definitions on the sheet — “A PORTAGE was a footpath used to connect waterways” and “A PALISADE was the outer fortified boundary…” beside the Palisades Trail — a trail map that teaches the words it uses. Bendix Woods passes by naming: its trail map carries the Big Tree Trail, the Deneve Wildlife Loop, Whispering Woods, the Hardwoods Loop and the Otahnagon and Van Paris loops, names that interpret the ground (big trees, wildlife, the Sugar Camp and the Studebaker Tree Sign, which a hiking trail passes through) even where the map adds no essay. The Izaak Walton grounds pass privately: the chapter's trail map — itself an Eagle Scout project of Troop 451, 2011–12 — names the Third Pond Loop, the Brook Trails Trail, Caretaker's Run, the Emergency Road and the Archery Course, with a trees key and a landmarks key, interpretation by a membership for itself. St. Patrick's numbered system (fourteen numbered routes in the 2026 map) names evocatively — Horsetail Trace, Manion Canyon, Box Turtle Loop, Deer Run, Milkweed Loop — but prints distances, not definitions; it is a named system, not an interpretive one, and is recorded as such. At Anderson Road, the test returns a clean negative as of November 2026: the ELC/DLZ design record contains no named interpretive trail — the park's trails were still concept designs — so Granger's own first interpretive trail, if it gets one, is still to be named. No “Native Tree Trail” or separately named Portage Trail publication was found in the county trail-guide record beyond the Ferrettie sheet above; where the register's test names came from larger systems, they do not transplant here, and the negative is printed.

Sources: St. Joseph County Parks, Ferrettie/Baugo Creek trail map (Portage Trail 1.1 mi; Palisades Trail 0.8 mi; printed “Trail Trivia” definitions); Bendix Woods trail map 2026 (named loops; Studebaker Tree Sign; Sugar House); Izaak Walton League St. Joseph County Chapter trail map (Eagle Scout Project, Troop 451, 2011–12 — Third Pond Loop, Brook Trails, Caretaker's Run; trees and landmarks keys); St. Patrick's trail map 2026 (numbered routes 1–14, named loops, distances); Anderson Road Park design record, Redevelopment Commission, Feb 2025 (no named trails — negative).