Manistee Lake Lakefront Homes and Vacant Land For Sale

Manistee Lake  is located in Manistee County, Michigan, in the northwestern Lower Peninsula. It is classified as a drowned river mouth lake due to its proximity to Lake Michigan and its location at the downstream end of the Manistee and Little Manistee Rivers. Manistee Lake serves as the confluence for the 2052.5 square mile Manistee River watershed (Grant 1977) and the 227 square mile Little Manistee River watershed (Wicklund and Dean 1957). Manistee Lake drains into the Manistee Harbor of Lake Michigan via a 1.5 mile-long channel. The channel is routinely dredged to allow for freighter traffic, as is Manistee Lake from the channel outlet to the T. E. S. Filer City Station coal-fired power plant. Manistee Lake is approximately five miles in length and ½ mile wide or less in most spots, although some discrepancies exist about its total size. According to Taube (1958) Manistee Lake is 930 acres in size; while Grant (1977) states that its size is 929 acres. Other sources state that Manistee Lake is as large as 1,062 acres. These discrepancies most likely occur because the size of Manistee Lake increases and decreases based on the rise and fall of Lake Michigan water levels. Although a contour map of Manistee Lake is not available, most of its waters are deeper than 15 feet, with a maximum depth of about 50 feet. The southern and northern ends of the lake are mostly shallow while the long, narrow, middle portion is the deepest.