Manistee Lake, MI

Manistee Lake is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Kalkaska County, with 465 people at the 2020 census. The CDP surrounds Manistee Lake, with most of its area in Coldsprings Township and a smaller portion extending south into Excelsior Township. Its official boundary is statistical rather than municipal: the place was newly organized as a census-designated place for the 2010 census and has no incorporated village government of its own.

The lake is the real center of the map. Manistee Lake covers about 876 acres, but it is relatively shallow, with a maximum recorded depth of 16.5 feet and an average depth near five feet. A Manistee Lake Improvement Board was established in 2005, and water-quality and vegetation monitoring has continued since 2006. Michigan's Department of Natural Resources also keeps lake-specific boating rules for the Coldsprings Township waters. Manistee Lake is therefore a community defined by a shoreline crossing a township line, with the census boundary and the lake-management board providing two different ways to describe the same place.