(From left) DTE volunteers Alpana Bajpayee, Sarah Crysler and Gary Dupuy helped plant flowers at the Polly Ann Trail trailhead on Clarkston Road near Joslyn Road. ‘I can’t wait to walk the trail later and see our hard work growing,’ Bajpayee said. Photos by Jim Newell.

New amenities at trailhead in the works

By Jim Newell
Review Editor
ORION TWP. — Volunteers from DTE Energy joined area officials to help spruce up the Polly Ann Trail and the pocket park at the Clarkston Road trailhead near Joslyn Road in May, giving trail users a clean, comfortable place to stop while using the trail.

Polly Ann Trail Manager Linda Moran arranged the cleanup with DTE on May 12. “DTE has partnered with the Polly Ann Trail and they do a lot of really good things for the community. They’re able to come out and help nonprofits and people like us and do a little project,” Moran said. “They contacted me and said, ‘We’d like to come out and do a trail day.’ I said, fantastic, let’s do a trail day. So, we’re mowing, we’re planting flowers, getting our spot all set up for spring and summer.”

The number of residents and nonresidents using the Polly Ann Trail has grown over the years, so keeping the trail clean and inviting is paramount.

“The use of the Polly Ann Trail over the past five or six years, especially through COVID, has expanded exponentially. We would get 10 to 20 people in our parking lot in the Village of Leonard, for example. We’ll get over 900 in a weekend now. It’s standing room only in all of our parking lots in the summer over the weekend. It’s amazing,” Moran said.

“We’re just beautifying this awesome gem that we have here in Orion,” said Orion Township Trustee Matt Pfeiffer, who joined the cleanup effort.

Pfeiffer, a commissioner on the Polly Ann and Paint Creek trails boards, said he appreciates when businesses, like DTE, and organizations volunteer to help with local projects and give back to the community. Home Depot volunteers will be out in the fall to help with other projects, he said, adding that if businesses and community groups want to help out with projects they should contact Moran at the Polly Ann Trail office.

“It’s just a cool project to get some extra help,” Pfeiffer said. “Linda runs a tight ship; she’s got it all lined up. It’s just a nice way to give them a chance to give back and give us some help to beautify the trail. These are just such nice gifts. We’re lucky to have them.”

“We’ve had a lot of sponsors help make it what it is. Seven years ago, you couldn’t see this spot, it wasn’t here,” Moran said. In the next month, the Clarkston Road trailhead will be getting a permanent vault toilet.

On May 13, the second annual Wade Sullivan Memorial Bike Ride from Orion Township to the Village of Leonard on the Polly Ann Trail helped raise funds toward new projects at the trailhead. Sullivan, a lifelong resident of Lake Orion, Lake Orion High School graduate and local construction company owner, died in November 2021.

“The Wade Sullivan group will be donating a pavilion and a sitting area,” Moran said. “That’s what they are raising money for; it’s in his honor.”

The Polly Ann Trail was voted one of Pure Michigan’s Best of the Best in the inaugural class in 2018. “Which is really awesome,” Moran said.

Besides walkers, runners and bicyclists, Polly Ann Trail users also use the trail for horseback riding, cross country snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

The Polly Ann Trail is a major non-motorized trail in Oakland County extending north from Orion Township in suburban Detroit on a former Pontiac, Oxford & Northern Railroad corridor.

The Oakland County portion of the Polly Ann Trail runs for 14.2 miles from Orion Township to the Lapeer County line at Bordman Road on the Lapeer/Oakland County border and connects the townships of Orion, Oxford and Addison and the Villages of Oxford and Leonard.