Overview:

  • The Clinton River Water Trail runs 72 paddleable miles through Metro Detroit, with 23 public access points and state-approved safety systems.
  • The river has three distinct sections: calm upper lakes near Waterford, challenging middle rapids from Auburn Hills to Utica, and a gentle lower stretch to Lake St. Clair.
  • New improvements include kayak racks built by local students, six accessible launches, and interactive Google Maps showing launches, portages, and reported log jams.

A group of Planet Detroiters met Sunday morning at Clinton River Heritage Park in Utica and walked a little under a mile into downtown, following the river past a floating dock, a stretch of freshly cut log jam, and a bank thick with Virginia creeper and a few sprigs of poison ivy.

The subject of the walk was the Clinton River Water Trail. The trail has 23 public access points strung between Waterford and Lake St. Clair, a set of state-approved maps and numbered safety signs, and a small staff at the watershed council trying to keep all of it current against a river that rearranges itself every time it rains hard.

Planet Detroiters visited the Clinton River Water Trail launch site in Utica on Sunday, July 27, 2026. Group selfie by Nina Ignaczak/Planet Detroit.

A water trail in 3 parts

Jeffery Schiffman, watershed planner at the Clinton River Watershed Council, led the walk. He started with the name.

The river is named for DeWitt Clinton, who was governor of New York, not Michigan. He championed the Erie Canal, and Michigan boosters hoped that flattering him would help them get a canal of their own dug from Lake St. Clair west across the state. Construction started, money ran out after about a decade, and remnants of the ditch are still visible north of Utica.

CRWC itself was founded in 1972 as a consortium of local governments organized to stop the Army Corps of Engineers from channelizing the river. It reorganized as a nonprofit in 1994.

The watershed covers 760 square miles across four counties and is the most populated watershed in Michigan. The river runs about 81 miles, 72 of them paddleable. It disappears underground in Pontiac, which is why that section shows up red on the water trail maps.

Schiffman divides the water trail into three personalities. The upper river through the Waterford chain of lakes is calm and beginner-friendly. The middle stretch from Auburn Hills to Utica drops several hundred feet and demands real skill. From Utica down to Lake St. Clair, the gradient flattens, the channel widens, and it gets forgiving again.

Water Trail signage helps paddlers navigate the water trail. Photo by Nina Ignaczak.

Flashy water, fallen trees

The river is flashy, meaning it rises and falls fast. Everything south of Auburn Hills is heavily developed, so rain hits pavement and roofs and arrives in the channel almost immediately. High flows pull leaning trees off the banks, and one downed tree is enough to collect everything moving downstream into a log jam.

(I got pinned to one years ago and had to be pulled out by the Macomb County Sheriff, who thankfully happened to be paddling with us that day, so I asked how that work is going.)

Better, it turns out, though the balance is delicate. Large woody debris is habitat and bank stabilization as well as a hazard, and by state rule anything embedded in the streambank cannot be removed without a permit.

The specialized contractor who handles most of this work for Macomb County, Oakland County, and Shelby Township tends to notch or trim logs rather than haul them out. Some jams stay put for years because there is no way to get equipment to them. A known obstruction in Rochester Hills sits at the bottom of a bluff ringed by private homes, Schiffman said.

New Clinton River plan with more amenities

The trail earned state designation in 2020, one of a growing number in Southeast Michigan. Designation means the state has signed off on the plan, the maps, the signage, and the safety system. Numbered safety signs appear every few miles — they’re geocoded so a 911 dispatcher can find you from the number — and are translated into Spanish and Arabic.

CRWC published a new water trail plan in March. Paddler feedback pushed amenities to the top of the list of desired projects. There is nowhere to lock a boat at most launches, so career and technical education students in both counties are building kayak racks this year for installation starting in the fall.

Clinton River Watershed Council watershed planner Jeffery Schiffman points out an area where woody debris has been cleared to make way for paddlers. Photo by Nina Ignaczak.

Six accessible universal launches are now in, with another silted in at River Bends Park awaiting repair. The council hired a dedicated water trail coordinator this spring and rolled out interactive Google Maps that load onto your phone and show launches, portages, amenities, and reported log jams.

Before you go

There is no registration, no one to check in with, and no one recommends going alone.

Resources

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Nina Misuraca Ignaczak is an award-winning Metro Detroit-based editor, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. She is the founder, publisher, and editor of Planet Detroit, a digital media startup focused on producing quality climate, health, and environment journalism that holds power accountable, and spotlights solutions. Planet Detroit has received awards and recognition from the Society for Professional Journalists Detroit, the Institute for Nonprofit News, and LION Publishers since its establishment in 2019. Prior to her journalism career, Nina worked in urban planning in local government and nonprofit sectors, holding a Master of Science in Natural Resource Ecology and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.