The shortcut river built to hold back floods

The Clinton River takes a long bend through Mount Clemens before reaching Lake St. Clair. In a flood, that bend used to put the city and nearby townships directly in the river’s path. So in 1950, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave high water a shortcut.

The Clinton River Spillway is a man-made channel about 2.5 miles long and 80 feet wide. It begins at an overflow weir near Gratiot Avenue and runs southeast to the lake. Its job is to divert floodwater before it reaches Mount Clemens, protecting parts of Clinton and Harrison townships too.

Flood control left the channel with a second life. A habitat project completed in 2019 reshaped parts of it for fish and wildlife. What looks like a straight little river on the map is really a piece of mid-century infrastructure learning to work more like a river.

The map makes more sense once the two routes are compared. The natural river keeps curving through Mount Clemens; the spillway takes the direct southeast line from Clinton Township into Harrison Township. It is still flood-control infrastructure, not a replacement river or an ordinary neighborhood drain. The restoration work added habitat features while preserving that job. Current access varies along the corridor, so the watershed council’s map is a better guide than assuming every bank is public.