The Club and the Program

The club from 1983; the program from 1976

The mechanism: The Buffalo Run exists because a South Bend club leases a county's worth of farmers' fields every winter. The club's own history is short and printed whole: "Our organization was established in 1983. We rode together for 17 years as the South Bend Snowmobiles Club." As all-terrain vehicles grew popular and members took to riding them in summer, "the name and by-laws were changed to the Michiana Trail Rider's Coalition. This change came about in 2000 and remains in effect as of today." The coalition is a nonprofit, family club whose members come from Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois; its clubhouse stands on Rice Road, just west of South Bend, meetings the third Friday of the month; its motto is "Dirt or Snow We're On The Go." A ghost of the old name survives in the state's paper: a DNR pamphlet of December 2004 still credited the Buffalo Run to a "South Bend Snowmobilers Club," the predecessor's name outliving the rename in print, as recorded in the Indiana State Library's checklist of state documents. The year the trail itself was designated does not appear in the publications read for this section; the club's 1983 founding is the earliest date the record gives, and the trail is not backdated to it here.

The mechanism that carries the trail is the state's, and the program manual — the 2025–2027 Indiana Snowmobile Trails Program Manual, published by the DNR and the association, with the Michiana Trail Riders Coalition named on its cover among the cooperating clubs — states it in full. The Indiana Snowmobile Trail program "began in 1976 as a cooperative effort between Indiana's snowmobilers and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources," and is "mostly funded by snowmobile registration fees paid by Indiana's snowmobile owners." The trails run on public land and on privately held, leased property; each club selects its trail's route, contacts landowners to secure leases, and pays its landowners at the season's end — since 2007 the clubs have managed all leases directly, at a lease rate of $75 per quarter mile or $2 per acre — and each club secures the trail's insurance, builds and signs and grooms it, and restores the property at the season's end. Under the cooperative agreements, the state pays the club a $1,500 pre-construction amount and $65 per mile for construction and maintenance, the lease payments passing through at the leased amounts. The law around it is Indiana Code 14-16-1; registration itself has run through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles since January 2014. The practical consequence is printed on the DNR's public page in capitals, and it is the whole system's fragility in one line: most trails have been leased from private landowners for public use, and "CONTINUED USE OF THE TRAIL DEPENDS UPON YOUR COOPERATION IN FOLLOWING THESE REGULATIONS." The Buffalo Run, at 63 or 68 or 70 miles of other people's land, held together by one club's leases, is the largest single piece of trail infrastructure in this section — and the only one that is unbuilt again every spring.

Sources:

1. Michiana Trail Riders Coalition, gomtrc.com, About page (the 1983 establishment, the South Bend Snowmobiles Club years, the 2000 rename and its reason, the Rice Road clubhouse, the motto).
2. Indiana DNR and Indiana Snowmobilers Association, 2025–2027 Indiana Snowmobile Trails Program Manual (the 1976 program beginning; registration-fee funding; the lease system and its rates; the clubs' responsibilities; the $1,500 and $65-per-mile payments; the 2007 lease change; the coalition named among the cooperating clubs).
3. Indiana DNR, "Snowmobiling in Indiana" (the leased-land frame and the cooperation warning, quoted).
4. Indiana State Library, 2009 Checklist of Indiana State Documents (the December 2004 DNR pamphlet crediting the "South Bend Snowmobilers Club" — as recorded in this history's Fort Wayne snowmobile account).
5. Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Off-Road Vehicles and Snowmobiles (registration through the BMV since January 2014; IC 9-18.1-14).