AMERICAN DISCOVERY TRAIL
NORTH ROUTE
The American Discovery Trail (ADT) is a coast to coast non-motorized trail. The northern route runs through Richmond, Muncie, Marion, Peru, Rochester, North Judson, and Crown Point as it crosses the state. The northern route travels 250 miles across beautiful rolling farmland in the great midwestern corn belt.
TRAIL FEATURES
Type of Trail: Various
Surface: asphalt
Uses allowed: walking, biking, hiking
AGENCY INFORMATION
State Coordinator – Northern Route
Mitch Barloga
Transportation Planning Manager / Active Transportation Planner
Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC)
6100 Southport Road
Portage, Indiana 46368
mbarloga@nirpc.org
Trail Website
History
In 1980 and 1981, the American Hiking Society (AHS) led a coast-to-coast hike across the nation to raise awareness of the need for more trails and backpacking. AHS partnered with Backpacker magazine to propose a coast-to-coast trail that would unify the national trails system. A coordinator hired by AHS has worked with volunteer organizers in every state the ADT runs through in order to create the coast-to-coast trail using trail assets in place in each of the states. For more information, visit the American Discovery Trail website at https://discoverytrail.org/
Multimodal
Amtrak is friendly to cyclists and hikers. As such, you can bring your bicycle onto the train. If you are only going to traverse a section of the American Discovery Trail (ADT), perhaps you could start in a city that has both the ADT and an Amtrak station in it, travel to another location along the ADT that has an Amtrak station, and use the train to return to your point of origin. For the north route of the ADT, we recommend Cincinnati and Chicago as origination and destination places where you could traverse the beautiful state of Indiana and take the train back to where you began.