New Era, MI

New Era is an Oceana County village of 446 residents at the 2020 census, tucked into a compact center surrounded by fields, orchards, and scattered homes. The village began around 1870, was incorporated in 1948, and got its first post office in 1872, when it operated from the Chicago and Western Michigan Railroad depot. That railroad disappeared, but its path found a second life as the Hart-Montague Bicycle Trail State Park.

New Era sits around the halfway point of the 22-mile paved trail, so Depot Park occupies the old train-depot site as a rest stop beside the route. First Street follows the old U.S. 31 through the village center, where historic storefronts and small businesses still give the place its shape. Country Dairy adds another local stop, with a farm store, deli, visitor center, and products such as milk, cheese, and ice cream. New Era's story is a neat handoff from trains to bicycles to a working farm counter. The old depot site makes that change easy to see.