Epoxy

Hamilton Lake

Dickinson County, Michigan, USA

Also known as Lake Mary, Lake Louise, Lake Hamilton, Vulcan Michigan

Two of these three lakes are named after a surveyor's daughters.

A government surveyor called Hamilton mapped this chain and recorded what he found: three bodies of water totalling about 240 acres, joined by natural channels, ringed by virgin pine. He put his own name on one lake and his daughters' names, Mary and Louise, on the other two.

The pine did not last. It was cut and floated down the Menominee River to the sawmills at Menominee. Businessmen followed the loggers and put up hunting camps and cottages along the shore. Around the turn of the century the Wisconsin and Michigan Railroad ran a line from Menominee up to Iron Mountain, passing between the second and third lakes.

Dickinson County was carved out of Marquette, Iron and Menominee in 1891, the last county Michigan created. Before that, this water was in Menominee County.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Maple
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: June 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Hamilton Lake map by Keyway

How this one was made

Maple, inset, with the dam following the waterline about half an inch out.

Three separate lakes and a fourth small pond off the east end, each dammed independently, then the channels between them. Those channels are the fine work. They run as single threads finer than the dam holding them, and at least two of them narrow to almost nothing before opening into the next lake. A run like this is the finest continuous dam work we do.

Maple gives the least sanding margin of the woods we use and shows staining more readily than walnut or cherry. On a board that is mostly bare face with a thin pour scattered across it, there is nowhere for a mistake to sit unnoticed.

Two colours, the water and the black. The black does the lettering, the compass rose and the small star at the west end.