Elk River Chain of Lakes Watershed
drainage basin in Michigan, United States
The Elk River Chain of Lakes Watershed, commonly known as the Chain of Lakes, is a 75-mile-long (121 km) waterway consisting of numerous lakes and connecting rivers in the northwestern Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The watershed empties via the Elk River in Elk Rapids into the East Arm of Grand Traverse Bay, a bay of Lake Michigan.
The watershed includes 500 square miles (1,300 km2) in Antrim, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse, and Kalkaska counties. The watershed includes a series of 14 lakes and interconnecting rivers. From the uppermost lake in the chain, Beals Lake in Echo Township, Antrim County, the water flows 55 miles (89 km) and drops 40 feet (12 m) in elevation. It has over 200 miles (320 km) of shoreline and almost 60 square miles (160 km2) of water surface area.
Geography
The chain of lakes system begins with the upper stage of the Intermediate River, which rises in hill country at 45°00′20″N 85°04′45″W in the northwest corner of Chestonia Township in central Antrim County. From here, the waterway traverses a number of small lakes flowing north, then making a sharp turn near the village of Ellsworth, flows south through a narrow valley, paralleling the tracks of the Pere Marquette Railroad, until emptying into Intermediate Lake. The outlet of Intermediate Lake converges with the Cedar River in the village of Bellaire, gaining considerable volume. Now a river of substantial flow, it continues south into 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) Lake Bellaire.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Elk River Chain of Lakes Watershed” is drainage basin in Michigan, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through River, Chain and Lakes, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elk River Chain of Lakes Watershed” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.