08/11/2026
Troyer's Trail Bologna comes from Trail, Ohio, a village in Holmes County so small it doesn't have its own zip code and shares one with nearby Dundee. The town got its name because State Route 515, the main road running through it, was originally a trail used by Native Americans before European settlers arrived in the area. Population statistics for Trail aren't even available, and about the only thing standing there today is the original production facility where the bologna is still made.
Michael Troyer purchased a meat market in Trail in 1912 and developed the recipe that made the town's name famous, a coarse-ground, all-beef sausage seasoned with a proprietary spice blend, hand-stuffed into casings and rolled into its signature ring shape before being slow-smoked over hardwood. That wood-smoking process gives it the dense texture and deep smoky flavor that separates it entirely from the soft, pork-based lunchmeat most Americans picture when they hear the word bologna. There's a longstanding local rumor that Troyer actually bought the recipe for $25 from another Trail family named Weiss who'd already been making it, though that's never been confirmed.
The business passed to Michael's son Lloyd just twelve years after it started, and it's stayed in the family through four generations, now run by Kenny, Kevin, and Darrin Troyer. Until 2007, the company was still packaging by hand and smoking meats manually. Modern automation and advanced smokehouses have scaled production to roughly 25,000 pounds a week, about 5,000 pounds every day, though the recipe and the all-beef, no-filler formula haven't changed.
A persistent misconception holds that original Trail Bologna was made from venison, which isn't the case, selling wild game meat is illegal, though the facility does process deer that hunters bring in using their own methods. The traditional way to eat it in Amish Country is sliced thin on a platter alongside cubes of Swiss or baby Swiss, and the general store on the factory grounds still serves hot and cold Trail bologna sandwiches, with Food & Wine naming the hot trail and Swiss sandwich the best in the entire state of Ohio. More than a century in, the operation still runs out of the same village that gave the product its name, a place small enough that the bologna is genuinely the only reason most people have ever heard of it