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. The PTC is supported through private donations, grants, and membership dues. Volunteers are not compensated for services.
The PTC focuses on the Erie Trail and the Grand Kankakee Marsh Trail. The Erie Trail extends 11.4 miles southeast from North Judson to Starke County Road 700 East near Bass Lake. The Grand Kankakee Marsh Trail now extends northwest from the Erie Trail for 0.6 of a mile.
The Erie Trail and Grand Kankakee Marsh Trail host transAmerican routes the Great American Rail-Trail, the northern branch of the American Discovery Trail, and US Bike Route 35. They offer 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 provides 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.
Eleven of the trail miles are on a 100-foot wide corridor of the rail banked right-of-way for the former Erie Railroad. The 12th mile was added through North Judson in 2026 and resulted from a collaboration among the PTC, Town of North Judson, Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, and Pinsly Railroad. Please be a good citizen and refrain from littering or trespassing on neighboring properties.
In 2026 the Town of North Judson was declared an official “Trail Town” of the American Discovery Trail Society. The Starke County Commissioners have approved five paved share-the-road Connectors for local interconnectivity. These Connecters were chosen to minimize contact with motorized traffic.