Bear Lake, Copemish, and the countryside

Between the Lake Michigan coast and the national forest, the northern and inland parts of Manistee County are quiet farm-and-lake country dotted with small villages. Bear Lake, on US-31, sits beside its 1,700-acre namesake lake — a popular spot for boating, fishing, and lakeside cottages — and anchors the surrounding township and farm country.

Inland to the east, Copemish was the first incorporated village in the county, back in 1891, and grew up as a railroad junction where several lines crossed. For a stretch of the mid-1900s it was a center of Michigan’s pickle industry; today it’s a small farming village near the Crystal Mountain resort just over in Benzie County. The smaller community of Pleasanton lies in the rolling farmland nearby. Closer to the city, the little village of Eastlake sits on the eastern shore of Manistee Lake.

For buyers, this part of the county is about value and elbow room: farmhouses, wooded and open acreage, modest village homes, and lakefront on Bear Lake. Outside the village centers, homes are on wells and septic (see the well-and-septic note).