Why Oakland? Oak openings, 1,400 lakes, and Michigan's prosperity engine
Oakland County took its name from the park-like oak openings the first surveyors found — and its 1,400 lakes and glacial hills still set the landscape apart.
When government surveyors pushed north of Detroit in 1817, they expected the swampy wilderness earlier reports had promised. Instead they found rolling hills covered in “oak openings” — park-like groves of burr and white oak spaced over open grassland. Millennia of natural prairie fire had shaped that ground, and the surveyors named the new county for those oaks. Beneath the trees, the glaciers had left a landscape unlike anywhere else in southeast Michigan: moraines, kettle hollows, and by the county’s own count some 1,400 lakes. That’s more than any other county in the state.
Two centuries later that geography still explains Oakland. The lake country drew the cottages that became year-round towns. The hills carry the orchards, cider mills, and downhill ski slopes metro Detroiters use without leaving home. On top of it all, the county built one of America’s most prosperous suburban economies. Wherever you land in Oakland County — a Woodward town, a lake township, a horse-country village — you’re living on the same lucky ground. The surveyors couldn’t quite believe it either.
Where to see it
Any of the county's parks and lake townships; Independence Oaks and Addison Oaks county parks preserve the old oak-and-lake landscape best.