Hubbard Lake was the 'Bottomless Lake' until a geologist got it named

The big clear lake that straddles three Alcona townships once had a name that gave the whole game away: the Bottomless Lake. Settlers came in during the 1830s and 1840s and found a deep, spring-fed sheet of water. It ran cold and clear, and dropped off fast from a hard sand bottom. They had no easy way to measure it, so they decided it had no floor at all.

It does, of course. The lake covers close to nine thousand acres, which puts it among Michigan’s largest inland lakes, and it runs seven miles top to bottom. In its deepest holes it drops close to a hundred feet. That keeps the water cold and the lake-trout and walleye fishing serious — but it’s a long way from bottomless.

The name we use now came in 1867. The lake was named for Bela Hubbard, a geologist who spent the 1830s and 1840s mapping Michigan’s rocks, minerals, and waters on the state’s first geological surveys. Hubbard knew this country firsthand from that work. The clear water that fooled the early settlers is still the lake’s calling card. On a calm day you can watch the bottom slide away under the boat until the sand drops out of sight and the water turns a deep cold green.

Because it’s spring-fed, it warms up slowly and stays cool well into summer. That’s half the reason families have hauled cottages and docks out to its shore for generations. The “bottomless” idea faded long ago, but the lake never lost the trick of looking far deeper than it is.