News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Besser Museum Creative Media Specialist Angela Addington and Besser Museum Board Trustee Gary Goren are pictured with a draft of the “Saturn” planet path sign.

ALPENA — The Besser Museum plans to install a planet path and history hike along a four mile stretch of the Alpena Bi-Path this August.

Gary Goren, Besser Museum Board trustee, came up with the idea for the path using inspiration from the planet paths in Lansing and Ithaca, New York.

The planet path in Ithaca is named after Astronomer Carl Sagan.

“It’s only a mile and goes through the downtown, and you get a passport and each planet you stop at you get it stamped,” Goren said. “I thought that was really cool.”

The path in Lansing starts at the Impression 5 Science Center and ends at the Abrams Planetarium. It’s about five miles long, Goren said.

The planet path in Alpena will be to-scale, meaning the distances between each planet path sign will be scaled down from the actual distances between planets in space.

Goren floated the idea to the museum’s board of trustees and it was eventually approved. The project has also been approved by the City of Alpena.

According to Chris Witulski, Besser Museum executive director, money for the project came from different sources. An amount of $2,500 came from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, $22,099 from an Alpena Youth and Recreation grant, and about $7,000 from Giving Tuesday. In total, the project has received $31,599 in funding.

On the reverse side of the planet path signs will be a history hike, where people can learn about local history. The history side will explain a piece of Alpena’s history that is specific to the location of that sign.

“You’ve got the planet on one side, but then you’ll have something about where you are in that space back in time,” Witulski said. “So what’s nice are some fun facts that a lot of our Alpena citizens, and of course our visitors, don’t know anything about.”

“It’s kind of a way of sucking people into the museum and expanding our museum reach a little bit into town,” Goren said.

The path will start at the Besser Museum and move down Johnson Street towards the intersection and then on to Island Park. Then it will go over the bridge on Chisholm Street, to the fairgrounds, through Washington Park, and finally end at Sytek Park.

The research, writing, and graphic design were all done in house, Witulski said. The graphic design was done by Creative Media Specialist Angela Addington. The hope is to get the graphic designs sent to Omega Electric and Sign Company by the end of May to have the signs fabricated and installed.

“It’s going to be a great permanent addition to the Bi-Path,” Witulski said.

Reagan Voetberg. News Staff Writer. rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.