Situated along Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Marquette area’s lakefront has attracted residents for millennia. The area’s rich history stretches from nomadic tribes hunting caribou at the foot of receding glaciers to the centuries-old Ojibwe cultural traditions embedded throughout the landscape and lake. These traditions continue to be vibrant today. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the area was the epicenter of Great Lakes iron mining, with local ore shipped from the city to feed the furnaces of steel mills in the eastern US. More recently, the city has enjoyed a renaissance of arts and culture. This vibrancy underpins the area’s post-industrial economy, which is now centered on academic and medical institutions alongside tourism. Capitalizing on this rich historical and cultural legacy, we are collaborating with the City of Marquette’s Office of Arts and Culture, along with many city departments and local stakeholders. Their initiative is the Marquette Cultural Trail, which connects several historically significant sites along a nearly seven-mile, multi-purpose waterfront trail. The trail weaves among existing parks, piers, and river crossings, incorporating both the harbor district and residential neighborhoods. The initial Vision Plan establishes innovative opportunities to explore Marquette’s past, present, and future through shared, multicultural stories of the people, land, water, industry, and development. The plan identifies standards for interpretive signs, spatial design guidelines, and web-based systems that collectively support story-based learning. The first phase of project implementation will begin with the installation of eight interpretive sites developed in coordination with place-based artist installations.