The modern position, as of November 2026

NOVEMBER 2026 · DATED, AND THIN WHERE IT IS THIN

The position, dated: as of November 2026 the designated estate stands exactly where the search found it — four DNR-cooperative trails and one association trail in Indiana, Buffalo Run the county's one, its map reissued 8 January 2026 with the season's terms unchanged: posted open, snow permitting, 1 December to 31 March. The club is alive and working on the record: the Michiana Trail Riders Coalition held its trail clean-up day on 24 October 2026, the fall brushing and signing that precedes every season, from its Rice Road clubhouse — a forty-three-year-old club still doing the mechanism's work. Registrations are a state record and print at state size only: no current Indiana registration count reaches the open record in a dated official series — the last firm figure in the federal record is the Federal Highway Administration's Recreational Trails Program table of 2005, which carried Indiana at 12,844 registered snowmobiles (state-provided, June 2005), and this section prints that figure with its date rather than inventing a modern one. What the Bureau of Motor Vehicles holds is a registration file, not a published series; a city- or county-level count exists in no register, and none is claimed here. The snow odds are the system's honest frame, and they are better than the trail's absence might suggest: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1991–2020 climate normals for the South Bend Michiana Regional Airport station put the ground's mean annual snowfall at 64.5 inches — 21.6 inches of it in January alone, 16.1 in February, 6.8 in March — with snow on 42.2 days a year at a trace or more. This is snowbelt ground by any Indiana measure; the normal winter buries it for the trail season's whole span, and the thin winters, not the normal ones, are the exception the groomers wait out. The modern position thus prints whole: a snow-rich CDP with no designated trail, a county trail in working order to its west under a living club, a state mechanism unchanged in its essentials since 1976, a mileage in four published figures and a fifth in a newspaper quote — and no invented trail, no invented mileage, and no borrowed county trail claimed as this ground's own.

Sources:

1. Indiana DNR, Buffalo Run map (8 January 2026) and "Snowmobiling in Indiana": the estate and season as of November 2026.
2. Michiana Trail Riders Coalition record, as read in the sister build: trail clean-up day, 24 October 2026.
3. Federal Highway Administration, Recreational Trails Program, "Snowmobile Estimates" (2005): Indiana 12,844 registered snowmobiles, state-provided 21 June 2005 — the last dated official figure reached; no newer official series found in the DNR, BMV or association registers searched.
4. NOAA / National Centers for Environmental Information, 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals, station SOUTH BEND MICHIANA RGNL AP, IN (USW00014848): mean annual snowfall 64.5 inches; January 21.6, February 16.1, March 6.8; 42.2 days a year with snowfall of a trace or more.