The City of Marquette’s shoreline has long been a place of natural beauty and community gathering, but now, it’s also becoming a place of deeper reflection and cultural storytelling. The Marquette Cultural Trail, currently in its first phase of development, is not just a paved path with signage. It’s a thoughtfully designed public space that blends art, history, culture, and nature into one evolving experience.
To learn more, we discussed the trail with Tiina Morin, the City of Marquette’s Arts and Culture Manager, who has championed the idea of the Cultural Trail for more than a decade. “This project is about place-revealing,” Tiina explained. “We’re not just putting signs on a path—we’re inviting people to pause, reflect, and truly engage with the shoreline and its layered history.”
The trail was developed with Urban Ecosystems, a landscape architecture company from St. Paul, Minnesota. The first phase of the project includes eight “story markers” installed along the multi-use path stretching from the Carp River to Presque Isle. These ten-foot-tall sculptural signs incorporate visual art, illustrations, dual-language text, and QR codes that link to web-hosted content. But more than that, they ask questions. “What do you hear? What do you see?” The trail encourages users to tune in, not just pass through.
One of the foundational goals, Tiina shared, is to honor all stories of the land, especially those that have long gone untold. Working with partners including the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Superior Watershed Partnership, and the Marquette Regional History Center, the project began with an exploration of historic Anishinaabe village sites along the shore. “Some people think it’s just an Indigenous trail,” Tiina said. “But really, it’s everybody’s trail. We’ve simply left out a lot of stories until now.”
Even complex or less “picturesque” sites—like the area surrounding the Carp River, with its mix of highway, old rail lines, and a water treatment facility—are embraced by the project. “We realized we shouldn’t ignore those spaces. Instead, we ask: why is this here? What history does it carry? What did it replace?” It’s a clear example of place-revealing over placemaking, a core concept behind the trail’s development.
Kurt Hauswirth spoke with Tiina about the trail:
Looking ahead, Tiina hopes the Cultural Trail acts as a catalyst, not only for reflection, but also for action. “If the biggest thing this trail does is send more people to the History Center or the NMU archives because they’re curious to learn more, then we’ve done our job.”
The public is invited to the official unveiling of the trail on Wednesday, June 25th at 11 a.m. at the Whetstone Brook marker near Gaines Rock, followed by a tour of the new cultural trailhead at 1 p.m. For those who want to explore further, story content and updates are available at https://mqtcompass.com/culturaltrail-story/.
