By Joel Thurtell
How did Low Lake get its name? Lily pads seen from kayak. Joel Thurtell photo.
How do places get their names?
Some place names seem self-explanatory.
If it’s the name of some person, like Lafayette or Washington, it’s easy.
Some are a mystery until you learn the secret. There’s a stop on the London Underground called “Elephant and Castle.” What? It’s a corruption of “Infanta de Castile,” a Spanish noblewoman who endeared herself maybe only a little to the English.
Other names, you can guess at.
Grand Rapids? Maybe someone noticed a rapids on a river called Grand. It was named “Grand” because, presumably, it was known as the longest stream in Michigan.
Detroit. French detroit, meaning straits.
Lowell, my home town in western Michigan, was first called Dansville after Daniel Marsac, a French fur trader. But the Frenchman was soon outnumbered by New Englanders who dragged a new place monicker from their home town and dumped Dan’s name.
Betsy Frank paddling her kayak on Low Lake in Ontario's Killarney Provincial Park. Joel Thurtell photo.
Last week, while kayaking on Low Lake in Ontario’s Killarney Provincial Park, I got into a conversation about lakes with Betsy Frank. Like my wife and I, Betsy and her family own a cottage in McGregor Bay, Ontario. The Bay is tucked into the northwest corner of Georgian Bay, which is almost big enough to be called a Great Lake adjacent and attached to Lake Huron.
Low Lake, by the way, is a pristine lake with plenty of pike and large mouth bass. It is bounded on one side by steep rocks towering, I guess, well over a hundred feet. The rocks slant inward as they descend to the water, making a cave-like area along one shore where you can paddle a kayak or canoe and be underneath the rock.
Lily pad on Low Lake. Joel Thurtell photo
You can’t get to Low Lake in a motorboat. Members of the McGregor Bay Kayak Club met at the St. Christopher’s Church docks on Iroquois Island, where we loaded our kayaks into motorboats and headed around McGregor Island for a bay where we anchored the motorboats and launched, then portaged, the kayaks toward Low Lake. To become a member, you have to show up at 10 a.m. on Friday with or without a kayak. The first time Karen and I went, we brought our 13-foot wooden canoe. After watching how easily the kayaks slid through even wind-swept water, I vowed never to kayak with a canoe again. Karen and I drove to Kagawong on Manitoulin Island and bought a pair of kayaks.
It was a bright day, and the water was so clear you could see the rocky bottom 20 feet below. We had to portage our kayaks twice to get to Low Lake, and we ate lunch on the rise that leads to Lake Helen, which leads to Ishmael Lake, whose waters tumble over a steep cliff into Iroquois Bay, the northernmost arm of McGregor Bay.
Kayak floats under hanging rock in Low Lake. Joel Thurtell photo.
As we paddled side-by-side, Betsy was telling me about another cottage her family has. It’s on Long Lake near Hale in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
Long Lake.
It rang a bell.
In fact, it rang many bells.
Not because I have a place on Long Lake. To my knowledge, I’ve never been near Long Lake.
But wait — which Long Lake would it be that I haven’t been near?
I chuckled as I paddled on Low Lake (named that, I assume, because it’s lower than its neighbors, Lakes Helen and Ishmael) and remarked that there are an awful lot of Long Lakes in Michigan
I don’t know how Lake Ishmael got its name; Most of these McGregor Bay names were given to places by Thaddeus Patten, who conducted the Canadian government survey around 1916. Patten named Lake Helen after Helen Bridges Heintz, a friend. He named Lake Marjorie on Iroquois Island after his daughter, and Lake Josephine, also on Iroquois Island, after a friend, Josephine Currie of Little Current.
Betsy, an elementary teacher in Florida, is originally from Michigan. She got interested in my lake tale. How many Long Lakes did I think there are in Michigan?
Well, I couldn’t recall the exact number, but I knew there are more than a handful.
And I knew right where to go for the exact number.
Before I retired as a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, I took it upon myself to cover the lakes beat in Oakland County, Michigan. Never mind that there was no such thing as a “lakes beat,” I just started writing stories about lakes and pretty soon it was established fact at the Free Press that I was the lakes reporter.
At the time, I was sailing my wooden Lightning-class sailboat on Cass Lake, a 1,280-acre lake in Oakland County that is part of the Clinton River. Nearby and on the drive to Cass Lake are Orchard (so named by 19th-century pioneers for the blossoming apple trees that were cultivated by Indians) Lake, Pine ( seemingly self-evident — there must have been a few pines around it) Lake and various iterations of Straits (maybe because they are long and narrow) Lake — Upper, Middle and Lower. There are a lot of lakes in Oakland County.
How many? How would you answer that question?
Hah! Count them! There are 1,857 lakes and ponds in Oakland County. More about that in my next column.
I discovered that there was another Cass Lake in Oakland County.
Next to Cass Lake in Keego Harbor is Dollar Lake. I had a hint that there was another buck or two lying around Oakland County. Sure enough, it has three Dollar Lakes.
At times when there were algae blooms or other unpleasant things happening with lakes, I’d call Wally Fusilier, a limnologist, meaning that he studies the condition of lakes. Wally has a PhD in public health from the University of Michigan and spends his time between ice-in and ice-out sampling water and surveying Michigan lakes. Often, I’d call Wally for advice on a lake story, and one day while talking to him, he showed me an inventory of lakes that was done by a professor at Michigan State University and old friend of Wally, the late Clifford Humphrys.
Wally gave me a copy of the “Michigan Lakes Inventory,” and I assigned myself to analyze the names of lakes in Michigan.
Lucky for me, I still have a copy of the story I wrote for the Free Press, and after referring to it, I can tell Betsy Frank exactly how many Long Lakes there are in Michigan.
Here you go, Betsy: Seventy-seven Long Lakes.
Sounds like a lot, but Long Lake is in third place for number of lakes with that name.
Number Two is Twin Lake at 124.
Number One is Mud Lake.
There are, amazingly, 264 Mud Lakes in Michigan.
What does this tell us about the originality of our pioneer Michiganders?
Guess name-giving was not as important as just surviving in those days.
Coming soon: I delved into my files and found not only my original Free Press article from March 22, 2002, but variants of a longer version that didn’t run. In that unpublished article, the late Michigan State University Prof. Clifford Humphrys discusses judgments he made in compiling the 1965 lakes inventory. I’ll publish that article along with a list of most-used Michigan lake names.
