| Lake Leelanau | |
| Location: | Leelanau County, Michigan |
| Coords: | 45°N -129°W |
| Inflow: | Cedar Run, Victoria Creek |
| Outflow: | Leland River |
| Basin Countries: | United States |
| Width: | 1.5miles |
| Area: | 2914acres North 5693acres South |
| Max-Depth: | 121feet North 62feet South |
| Cities: | Leland, Lake Leelanau, Fountain Point, Cedar |
| Pushpin Map: | Michigan |
| Pushpin Map Alt: | Location of the lake in Michigan. |
| Other Name: | North Lake Leelanau, South Lake Leelanau; Carp Lake |
Lake Leelanau is a lake that is located in the Leelanau Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The lake is divided into two basins, usually referred to as North Lake Leelanau and South Lake Leelanau, which are divided by the Lake Leelanau Narrows in the community of Lake Leelanau. The entire lake covers about 8608acres. The lake is drained by the Leland River, which flows to Lake Michigan in the community of Leland.
Lake Leelanau is also occasionally referred to as Carp Lake.
Lake Leelanau connects on the northwest to the Leland River, which runs for one mile (1.6 km) to Lake Michigan. Between North Lake Leelanau and South Lake Leelanau the water narrows for about a mile near the unincorporated community of Lake Leelanau. A bridge crosses the narrows on M-204. Just south of the bridge is Fountain Point, a historic and scenic landmark as well as a popular summer resort.
On the southern end, South Lake Leelanau ends in a marshy area fed by several small creeks, and the waters access the community of Cedar in Solon Township.
Lake Leelanau runs 21miles through the middle of the Leelanau Peninsula; it is about 1.5miles at its widest. The south lake includes 5693acres, the north lake includes 2914acres, and the lakes have a total shoreline of about 41.2miles. The south lake has an average depth of 24feet, and a maximum depth of 62feet; the north lake has an average depth of 40feet and a maximum depth of 121feet.[1]
Indigenous people who first inhabited the area called this land "ke-ski-bi-ag," which means "narrow body of water,".[2]
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indigenous agent for the territory, was credited with formally naming the county, and was said to use Leelinau as a character in his writing. See Leelanau County for a more complete discussion of the etymology of the name.
Scholars have established, however, that Leelinau was first used as a pen name by Schoolcraft's wife Jane Johnston Schoolcraft in writings for The Literary Voyager, a family magazine which she and her husband wrote together in the 1820s.[3] Jane Johnston was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish descent, and wrote in Ojibwe and English. While her writing was not published formally in her lifetime (except as Schoolcraft appropriated it under his own name), Jane Johnston Schoolcraft has been recognized as "the first Native American literary writer, the first known Indian woman writer, the first known Indian poet, the first known poet to write poems in a Native American language, and the first known American Indian to write out traditional Indian stories."[4] In 2008 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.[5]