For a century, a Lakeside summer was measured in car trips: down Lakeshore to the Inn, back up to Red Arrow for the fish market, over to Cherry Beach if the lot had space. The June 2025 ribbon-cutting at the Lakeside Park trail crossing changed the geometry. A year in, the traditions haven't moved. The way residents string them together has.
This is a post about that stringing.
What actually changed in June 2025, and what's still changing in 2026
The Red Arrow Trail is an eight-mile paved non-motorized pathway running from New Buffalo to Sawyer, officially opened at a ribbon-cutting at the corner of Lakeside Road and Red Arrow Highway on Friday, June 27, 2025. The choice of location was not incidental. Lakeside Park sits at roughly the midpoint of the eight miles, which makes the town less an endpoint and more the natural hinge.
Two things are worth knowing for this summer specifically. First, the Berrien County road department scheduled path restoration between Berrien Street and Cherry Beach Road for the first weekend of May 2026, which is the stretch most Lakeside residents actually use to reach the beach on foot. Second, the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission is still working on extensions south toward New Buffalo and north toward Bridgman and beyond. The trail you have now is the shortest version of the trail you will eventually have.
Chikaming Township Supervisor David Bunte, at the ribbon-cutting, said the goal was to reduce the number of car trips required to complete "a simple task." A year on, that is the concrete change residents describe: fewer three-minute drives, more twelve-minute walks.
The traditions that still set the clock
The Red Arrow Trail is new. Lakeside's summer calendar is not. The Lakeside Association still runs the events that structure the season, and they still happen on more or less the same days they always did.
Memorial Day at Lakeside Cemetery. Held on Lakeside Road near Red Arrow Highway, with the New Buffalo American Legion Post and Chikaming Parks. Patriotic speeches, songs, and the same short program families have shown up to for decades.
The July 4th Parade. Billed by the Association as "the BIGGEST little parade." Kazoo band, decorated bikes, wagons, dogs. Runs right through town.
The Ice Cream Social. Under the big tent at Lakeside Park. Five dollars gets you a slice of a homemade cake and locally donated ice cream. Proceeds fund the Association's scholarships for River Valley High School graduating seniors.
Adopt-A-Road cleanup. Teams of two, assigned stretches of Red Arrow, roughly an hour of work. This one has quietly gotten easier since the paved trail replaced the ragged shoulder that used to collect debris.
Mingle and Munch at the Lakeside Inn. Held as the summer season winds down. An informal gathering, an excuse to hear who is closing up and who is staying through October.
Nothing on that list is new. What is new is that a resident can now walk from any of them to the next without stepping onto the shoulder of Red Arrow.
The porch as anchor
The Lakeside Inn has been on the bluff since Alfred Ames bought the land in 1884, and it is on both the state and national registers. The building matters for practical reasons more than sentimental ones. Its 100-foot front porch, lined with rocking chairs facing the lake, is functionally the town's living room. The cafe serves breakfast most weekend mornings. Rooms 14, 21, and 31 have their own quiet followings, and Room 31 is the one architectural historians tend to request.
Two features of the Inn are less visible but shape the character of the neighborhood in ways that a passing weekender never sees.
The first is the artist residency program. Applications open September 1 and close October 26. Selected artists work in a studio building on the east side of the property, with a separate clay studio for approved ceramicists. During the summer months, the residency runs an Artist Work Exchange, where residents earn a paycheck for sixteen to twenty-five hours a week of housekeeping and spend the rest of their time on their own work. This is why you occasionally overhear a rehearsal drifting from the studio building on a Tuesday afternoon.
The second is the House of Eleven Gables, one of the oldest houses in Lakeside, moved from two lots down the road around 2003 by the late Devereux Bowly and refurbished to match the Inn. It sleeps ten, sits directly across from the lake, and functions as the overflow for weddings and reunions the Inn itself cannot absorb.
An unfussy Saturday, walked not driven
Here is the shape a resident weekend increasingly takes, presented not as a suggestion but as an observation of what people already do.
- Coffee on the Inn porch, or breakfast in the cafe if it is a weekend morning.
- South on the Red Arrow Trail toward Union Pier for a stop at Flagship Specialty Foods & Fish Market for whitefish for later, and PostBoy or Oaks Eatery if you did not eat at the Inn.
- Back north to Cherry Beach through the middle of the day, either on foot or by bike depending on the temperature.
- A drink at The Historian Cocktail Lounge before the walk home, or Red Arrow Roadhouse if the mood is louder.
- Cake at whatever Association event is on the calendar that weekend, or dinner at home with the fish you bought on the walk south.
None of the businesses on that list are new. What is new is that you can do all of it without moving a car.
"It's an artery through the heart of Harbor Country. Whether you begin your journey in New Buffalo or you begin it in Sawyer, you'll pass through us."
Kimberlee Wendt, Executive Director, Harbor Country Chamber of Commerce, at the June 2025 ribbon-cutting
The beach map most residents already know, and one detail they might not
Chikaming Parks maintains the shoreline. The distinction that matters if you are already a resident is between Cherry Beach, which is set up for volume, and the smaller access points, which are set up for you.
| Beach | Character | Notes for residents |
|---|---|---|
| Cherry Beach | Largest, roughly 657 feet of shoreline after a recent three-acre acquisition | Parking passes required in season; township provides trash pickup and weekend security patrols |
| Townline, McKinley, Miller, Berrien, Pier, Harbert | Walk-to or bike-to only | No lifeguards, no parking, no facilities; no pets, ground fires, or alcohol |
The Chikaming Parks page is worth bookmarking because it also covers the 90-acre Harbert Road Preserve, which has two ponds, wetlands, and prairie fields for pheasant nesting. Most residents forget it is there until the weekend a houseguest asks for a walk that is not the beach.
One other detail from the same page that is worth carrying in your head. Lakeside Park itself was created after Red Arrow was widened following the Second World War, when a triangle of land was left between the old Austins Grocery site and the highway. The E.K. Warren Foundation bought the parcel to preserve it. The Lakeside Association stewarded it for decades before Chikaming Parks took over. The Ice Cream Social under the big tent is, in a sense, held on the town's original act of self-preservation.
When the trail eventually reaches Bridgman
The plan on file with the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission calls for the linear pathway to extend both north and south of the current eight miles. The vision, first articulated at the 2021 Union Pier ribbon-cutting for phases one through three, was always to reach from New Buffalo to Bridgman and beyond. Kevin Stack, the Berrien County road department project engineer who has led the effort since 2015, described it publicly as beginning life as a simple resurfacing project.
That history is worth holding in mind before the next summer arrives. The town you live in now, the town where you can walk from the Inn porch to Cherry Beach without touching a car door, is a middle chapter. The path will keep lengthening. The traditions almost certainly will not move.
That combination is what makes a Lakeside weekend in 2026 quietly unlike a Lakeside weekend in any prior year: the calendar is the same, the map is different, and residents are the first ones to feel it.
If you already own here and are thinking about what a next chapter looks like, whether that means downsizing off the bluff, adding a walk-to-beach cottage, or eventually selling to the next family who wants the Inn porch on Saturday mornings, Shoreline Advice is glad to talk when you are ready. Request a Free Home Valuation and we will follow up with a considered read of your specific block, not a template.
