Text Box:  Sunken Lake and "Mystery Valley" Legends concerning Sunken and Rainy Lakes have been written about since the 1950's. An early geologist, Newton Winchell, speculated on the presence of an underground drainage system in Alpena and Presque Isle Counties. Early State Geologists, such as Carl Rominger and R.A. Smith also observed the sinkholes and karst features of this area.     Sunken Lake and its dry-lakebed counterpart, "Mystery Valley", are located in sections 32 and 33 of Presque Isle County, just north of the Alpena-Presque Isle County line, and 2 or 3 miles north of the well-known Leer sinkholes. Sunken Lake is located on the North Branch of the Thunder Bay River. In the 1950's, the Michigan Tourist Council reported that flowers were planted in the floor of Mystery Valley after Sunken Lake has dried up and disappeared one year. During the following year, the lake reappeared as the sinkholes in its bed again became plugged, illustrating how and why these types of lakes drain--they have sediment-plugged sinkholes in their beds that occasionally become "unplugged" of sediment, allowing the water to flush down the sinkhole into subterranean drainage ways in the fractured limestone below.     One year during the early 1900's, it is alleged that lumberers attempted to float logs down the North Branch of the Thunder Bay River at Mystery Valley, but the logs would stop at the large sinkhole in the valley. Since the log jams caused the water which normally flows into the sinkhole to back up, the valley flooded and a diversion dam was consequently built to route the logs away from and around the sinkhole at Sunken Lake. Another popular legend from the lumbering era states that loggers would "ride into the sinkholes" on their logs, then reappear in Misery Bay of Lake Huron, 23 miles to the southeast, "still smoking their pipes". Rainy Lake Activity Rainy Lake, located about four miles east of Shoepac Lake, is composed of five or six sinkholes. The deepest sink typically has up to 100 feet of water in it and acts as a swallow. Rainy Lake has had significant fluctuations of its water level in the past. This is frequently caused by catastrophic drainage due to the temporary loss of the silt and clay "plugs" which seal the sinkholes. The last drop occurred between 1979 and 1982 (compare the aerial photos of Rainy Lake taken in 1981 and 1983), when a 4 to 5 foot vertical drop in the water level occurred in February 1982. Measurements have shown a change in the bottom contours of the lake due to the continuing collapse of sinkholes beneath the lake.     Although Sunken Lake has disappeared and reappeared several times, historical documentation is more complete for Rainy Lake.  Rainy Lake is a rather large lake in SW Presque Isle County (see below).  This lake, more than a mile in length, is underlain by limestone bedrock, which is obviously full of solution holes, caves, and joints.  It is well-documented that Rainy Lake drained in 1894, 1925, 1950, and in 1980. By 1983, Rainy Lake has fully recovered from the 1980 drainage event. There are at least five sinkholes in the bed of Rainy Lake, which reportedly drain into a west-east trending subterranean drainage system. In the 1980 event, however, only one sinkhole appeared to be active.

Rainy Lake Info

Rainy Lake Property Owners Association, Inc.

To contact us:

Phone: 586 465 0065

E-mail: rploa@core.com