Waters, Michigan

The tiny community of Waters in Otsego County was born from the logging boom of the eighteen seventies, when a lumbering operation was established at Bradford Lake. The post office that opened in eighteen seventy-six was first called Bradford Lake, and the railroad stop went by Wright's, but the settlement eventually settled on the name Waters. Michigan was the nation's leading lumber producer for decades in the late nineteenth century, and communities like this one followed the sawyers and rail lines deeper into the northern forests.

Once the timber was stripped, most of the boomtowns shrank or vanished. Waters held on as a small unincorporated community, tucked into northern Michigan lake country where seasonal residents and deer hunters now outnumber the old-timers.