Historic Tour of Detroit

Today I gave a bike tour in Detroit to my girlfriend's family and their friends who we vacation with every summer. I give a lot of tours through The Wheelhouse Detroit but this was a nice pace since we are all friends.

They are a great group of people so I knew this tour would be fun before it event started.

We started out at The Wheelhouse Detroit where most of the group rented bikes. From there we continued up the Detroit River Front, through part of Milliken State Park, and across to the Dequindre Cut.

The Dequindre Cut, an below-street level urban recretional path, is one of my girlfriend's favorite places to ride. Officially opened to the public in May 2009. The greenway, developed through a public, nonprofit and private partnership, offers a pedestrian link between the Riverfront, Eastern Market and many of the residential neighborhoods in between.

This path is well-known for it's artwork. She loves all of the commissioned grafitti and mural paintings that cover the walls of recessed trail, which was formerly a Grand Trunk Railroad line, which connected with the river front.

She probably also likes riding here because it's a fairly short ride, just over a mile, right now but there are plans to expand it in the future. The 1.35-mile greenway is expected to expand further north in a Phase II project.

From there we cut over to Indian Village, a historic neighborhood located on Detroit's east side and is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The district has a number of architecturally significant homes built in the early 20th century. Many of the homes were built by prominent architects such as Albert Kahn, Louis Kamper and William Stratton for some of the area's most prominent citizens such as Edsel Ford. Many of the homes are very large, with some over 12,000 square feet. Some of the houses also have large amounts of Pewabic Pottery tiles, a staple among the elite of Detroit's oldest estates. The neighborhood contains many historic homes including the automotive entrepreneur Henry Leland, founder of Lincoln and Cadillac.

I like taking people through this and similar neighborhoods because it shows another side of Detroit. Many people think of Detroit as either a busy, urban setting where people live in apartments and walk to everything or they think of the complete opposite, urban decay. This area shows people who are used to more traditional living arrangements an example of a great and vibrant neighborhood perfect for professionals and families alike.  This weekend was also the neighborhood's garage sale weekend so we got a sneak peak at a lot of old estates and antique furnishings.

For even more history we headed to Elmwood Cemetary, the oldest continuously operating, non-denominational cemetery in Michigan. The cemetery was established in 1846 and incorporated in 1849 as a non-profit corporation by an act of the Michigan Legislature. Founded by some of early Detroit’s leading citizens, Elmwood quickly expanded from its original 42 acres to its current size of 86 acres and became the final resting-place of tycoon and laborer alike.

Some of Elmwood's more notable and prominent Detroit burials include Lewis Cass (1782-1866), Michigan Teritorial Governor and U.S. Secretary of State, and Coleman Young (1918-1997), Mayor of Detroit.

From here be made the trip back to where we started. All-in-all we rode about 14 miles in just under 2 hours. Along the way we stopped to talk about the areas in which we were visiting, photo ops, and to enjoy the scenery--all which made for a great afternoon!

Similar tours can be booked through The Wheelhouse Detroit, located on the Detroit River Front.