Six Lakes, named by counting

Whoever named the lakes around here didn’t waste any imagination. There are six of them, strung together in northern Montcalm County, and they’re called First Lake, Second Lake, Third Lake, Fourth Lake, Fifth Lake, and Sixth Lake. The village that grew up among them took the obvious name: Six Lakes.

It sits in Belvidere Township, right where M-46 running east-west crosses M-66 running north-south — a real crossroads in a quiet part of the county. The community came together in the 1870s, back when a Pere Marquette branch line ran through, and the water has been the draw ever since. A connected chain like this is a particular kind of good: you can put a small boat in on one lake and work your way through to the next without trailering, fishing or just drifting from one to another on a still evening.

The plain numbering is its own small charm. Michigan is full of lakes borrowing fancy or borrowed names — Crystal, Diamond, every “Clear” and “Mirror” on the map. Here, somebody walked the chain, counted, and stopped at six. It’s the kind of name that tells you exactly how many of something there are and nothing more, and there’s an honesty in that.

The township still leans on the lakes for its identity, calling itself the “Chain of Six Lakes.” A little local museum near the village opens summer Saturday afternoons to keep the old stories. But the best way to understand the name is to come up in July, stand at the M-46 and M-66 corner, and realize the place really is exactly what it says: six lakes, and a town that didn’t bother dressing them up.