Michigan Lake Appreciation: Glen Lake edition

Sunglow over Glen Lake by Owen Weber

While Minnesota gets a lot of mileage out of their “Land of 10,000 Lakes” slogan, Michigan has over 10,000 lakes larger than 5 acres. Clean Water Action of Michigan has been working to draw attention to our incredible good fortune with an incredible Twitter thread of Michigan’s largest lakes.  Check the lakes out at #LakesAppreciation on Twitter! & learn more about Clean Water Action Michigan on their website.

Big & Little Glen Lake check in at #18 on the list of Michigan’s largest inland lakes or 23 if you include the 4 Great Lakes & Lake St. Clair. Glen Lake is 6265 acres (9.8 square miles) with 17 miles of shoreline and a maximum depth of 130 feet. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore page on Glen Lake says:

Glen Lake, with its remarkably blue waters, is famous for its beauty. The lake appears divided into two parts by the constriction at the “narrows” bridge. The two parts are Little Glen Lake in the foreground, only 12 feet deep, and Big Glen Lake, beyond the M-22 bridge, about 130 feet deep. Glen Lake used to be connected to ancestral Lake Michigan. Glacial erosion carved out both lakes during the Ice Age. In post-glacial times, a sand bar developed, separating Glen Lake from Lake Michigan. Both the D.H. Day Campground and the village of Glen Arbor are located on that sandbar. The flat terrain and proximity to Lake Michigan made it a desirable site for these developments.

Owen took this photo a few years ago from atop the Sleeping Bear Dunes. See more in his Michigan gallery on Flickr & view and purchase prints at OwenWeberPhotography.com.