Rivertown

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Rivertown was Detroit's working waterfront: warehouses, rail spurs and the Parke-Davis drug company, whose 1902 lab was the country's first industrial laboratory built for pharmaceutical research. When industry moved out, much of the riverbank went quiet until 2003, when the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy formed and started stitching together the RiverWalk. Today you can walk or bike more than eight miles of continuous trail from Belle Isle to Michigan Central, past Milliken State Park's lighthouse, the sandy beach at Valade Park and the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre. Back from the water, old warehouses and the Stroh River Place complex hold lofts, offices and corner bars that have outlived everything, and on Jefferson stands the 1826 Trowbridge House, the oldest documented building in Detroit. It's the place where Detroit slows down and watches the freighters go by.

1. Join a Wheelhouse Detroit bike tour from Cullen Plaza, or just ride the RiverWalk east on your own.
2. Loop Milliken State Park's wetland paths out to the lighthouse at the harbor entrance.
3. Dig your toes into the sand at Robert C. Valade Park, Detroit's riverfront beach.
4. Catch a summer concert at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre.
5. Have a pint in the Atwater Brewery taproom or a home-style lunch at Andrews on the Corner, run by the same family since 1918.
6. Board Diamond Jack's narrated river cruise at Cullen Plaza, and finish your walk at Gabriel Richard Park by the Belle Isle bridge.