The Lake

Come sit with us on our dock on the south side of the lake while I do a little reminiscing about Five Lakes. It is true that at one time while sitting here you would have been looking at three lakes, instead of one. The largest lake in front of us was named Arnold Lake; the lake at the northwest was Bass Lake or Deep Lake, and the lake at the north side was named Perch Lake. No, Don and Linda Ramin, that was not a lake back where you are – that was all thick marsh land. In fact, any place where the water now is 5′ deep or less was formerly marsh land – solid enough to walk .on. A small fishing boat could get through a narrow channel from Arnold Lake to Bass Lake and through a narrow channel from Arnold Lake to Perch Lake. That accounts for three of the “Five lakes”. The other two lakes are South lake, which is located just south of Kapplinger Drive, and Gut Lake which is northwest of Bass Lake…the exception is the south side of Arnold Lake, where the marsh was covered with sand to act as a retaining wall when the lakes were raised later.

By the 1940’s Jim McKay, a road building contractor/entrepreneur whose home base was Detroit, had purchased property in Clare County, including some land around all the lakes. He bought the last large piece of property on Bass Lake from Kenneth Eberhart. My father, William Kapplinger, owned much of the south side of Arnold Lake. It didn’t take Jim McKay too long to realize the possibility of one large lake with fine homes and cottages around it. After much
planning, negotiating, wheeling/dealing, with the other land owners, the dam was built and the lakes were raised in 1961, finally forming the one lake you see today. He sold a few lake lots and then turned the property over to the Dyer White Sand Venture who formed your Association restrictions, and who really promoted the sale of the lake lots.

Now to go way back to the mid-1800’s for some local history. Would you believe that on the south side of Arnold lake, there were train tracks that ran from about where the dam is. The logging train, operated by a steam engine, was used to carry logs out that had been cut in the surrounding area. If you take your boat or pontoon out on a clear, quiet day and look into the water (about 200′ from shore at the south east corner of Arnold Lake) you’ll see bark on the bottom of the lake deposited from those old logging days.

In those days before electric refrigerators, the lake was so pure that ice was cut from it and was sold in the city of Clare for use in the ice boxes in the homes there.

One farm family who lived beside Bass Lake used one of the ice cold springs as a “refrigerator”. They placed a wooden barrel down in the spring and kept their butter, milk, etc. fresh and cold. They would fill a crock jug of water from the spring to drink from while they were out working in the fields.

There are more tales to tell, but it’s getting late so I’ll stop talking for now. If anyone is interested in more detail or more stories, give me a call.