 | | Visitors get a vivid welcome as then turn onto M-67 and head into town. (They have already passed the sign announcing Trenary as the home of the Outhouse Classic, a parade and race of customized outhouses on runners, held the fourth Saturday of February.) | Originally a sawmill town, Trenary grew into a large enough farming community to have, at one time, two groceries, three bars, and a movie theater. Many bygone businesses and scenes are remembered in lively paintings on the sides of buildings.
Trenary has had a tremendous sense of local pride. The Lions Club built a park east of town.
The Trenary Farmers' Co-op store (906-446-3411) is a grocery and general store at the north end of Trenary Avenue, the main business street. It continues to be cooperatively owned and run, open to the general public. Hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, Sunday 9 to 1.
Two bars are on Trenary Avenue, too, the Silver Dollar with a log front, and the Trenary Tavern (906-446-8305), open daily from 7 a.m. to midnight. It has a full menu and homemade pizza. Handicap access is on the side.
 | | Sunflowers and lupine bloom against a sky that’s always blue on the rear wall of the corner house at the top of the hill. | To get into town from U.S. 41 between Rapid River and Marquette, turn east at the blinker light. In less than a block you'll be on Trenary Avenue, the north-south street with most of Trenary's businesses, to the right. The community building (a local cooperative project) is ahead on the east edge of town.
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 | | Trenary is a picture-perfect small farm town from the era of small farms. Today it has residents with great community spirit, but lots of empty buildings. One art project enlivened many buildings with vignettes of fondly remembered farm and town life. | The Trenary Home Bakery has put Trenary on the map for U.P. natives across the U.S. and far away, with its "Trenary Toast." Together with pasties, it's a chief U.P. soul food. Actually it's traditional Finnish korpu or twice-baked cinnamon toast, sold in a distinctive brown bag. Korpu made a convenient quick breakfast for whoever had to get up early to milk the cows.
 | | Trenary has two taverns, one with pizza and home cooking A cooperative grocery across the street is a vestige of the Finnish rural cooperative movement that thrived in the U.P and northern Wisconsin and Minnesota in the 1920s and 1930s. | The TRENARY OUTHOUSE CLASSIC, held the last weekend in February, has gained Trenary national publicity because it's one of those colorful, easy newswire stories that harried editors find hard to resist. Centerpiece of the weekend is an outhouse race. Requirements: build an outhouse of wood or cardboard, install a toilet seat and TP roll, mount it on skis, and push it 500 feet to win. Subcategories include "People's Choice," "Most Original," and "Most Miles Traveled." Check out its web site for details. The event, with
food and beer, is an excuse to get out and party when there's still a good six weeks left of winter. (—April, 2008)
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