Michigan’s state map of inland lakes holds 64,911 lakes and ponds, from Houghton Lake in Roscommon County at 20,075 acres down to outlines of 0.01 acres. 6,463 of them cover 10 acres or more, 1,128 cover 100 acres or more and ten cover 10,000 acres or more.
So the answer depends on where you draw the line. The table counts the same map nine ways.
| Counting | Lakes |
|---|---|
| Every lake and pond on the state map, any size | 64,911 |
| A tenth of an acre or more | 62,730 |
| 1 acre or more | 26,183 |
| 5 acres or more | 10,031 |
| 10 acres or more | 6,463 |
| 100 acres or more | 1,128 |
| One square mile (640 acres) or more | 159 |
| 1,000 acres or more | 98 |
| 10,000 acres or more | 10 |
In 2015 Tony Groves and Pam Tyning counted the same state data by size for The Michigan Riparian. Every figure in their table matches the map we fetched, from the ten lakes of 10,000 acres or more to the full count.
Source: Michigan DNR hydrography, Lake Polygons layer (Michigan GIS Open Data), fetched 26 Oct 2026. Each lake polygon counted once; island and stream shapes in the same layer are left out. Comparison: T. Groves and P. Tyning, “11,000 Lakes in Michigan: Fact or Fiction?”, The Michigan Riparian, Fall 2015, pp. 24–25 (PDF), read 26 Oct 2026.
The figure usually quoted is 11,000. Michigan DNR’s inland lake maps page says “Michigan has more than 11,000 inland lakes”; the wording Google shows for it gives no size line. Groves and Tyning trace the number to a 1943 count by Brown, who used the best maps of the day, counted every body of standing water whatever its size, and reported 11,037 lakes, more than half of them under 10 acres. They take that account from a 2004 DNR Fisheries report by J. E. Breck.
Today’s map does not give 11,000 at any of the usual lines. It takes an unusual one to come close: lakes of 4.2 acres or more number 11,143. The 5-acre line, which Groves and Tyning take from Michigan’s Inland Lakes and Streams Act, gives 10,031; the 10-acre line gives 6,463.
Two other sets of figures circulate. The Wikipedia list of Michigan lakes gives 62,798 lakes of a tenth of an acre or more, 26,266 of 1 acre or more, 6,537 of 10 acres or more and 1,148 of 100 acres or more, citing the DNR’s “Compilation of Databases on Michigan Lakes”. The map we fetched gives 62,730, 26,183, 6,463 and 1,128. The Michigan Lakes and Streams Association gives 11,037 lakes of five acres or more and 6,516 of 10 acres or more; 11,037 is Brown’s total, and Brown, as Groves and Tyning quote him, counted water of any size.
Michigan DNR hydrography, fetched 26 Oct 2026. Michigan DNR inland lake maps page (michigan.gov), wording as shown in Google’s result, read 26 Oct 2026; we do not copy michigan.gov pages. Groves and Tyning, The Michigan Riparian, Fall 2015, quoting Breck, J.E. 2004. Compilation of Databases on Michigan Lakes. Fisheries Technical Report 2004-2, Michigan DNR Fisheries Division. Wikipedia and Michigan Lakes and Streams Association, read 26 Oct 2026.
Oakland County has the most lakes of 10 acres or more, 355, followed by Marquette (298), Gogebic (219) and Iron (210). The ten counties at the top hold 2,100 of the 6,461 lakes the state files under a county, or 33%.
At the other end, Sanilac County has one lake of that size; Huron (8), Arenac (10) and Gratiot (13) have the next fewest. Every one of Michigan’s 83 counties has at least one.
Our county pages list these lakes county by county, so they add up to 6,461. The state count is 6,463 because two outlines of 10 acres or more (11.4 and 10.0 acres) carry no county, name or lake number in the record.
Source: Michigan DNR hydrography, Lake Polygons layer (Michigan GIS Open Data), fetched 26 Oct 2026. Lakes of 10 acres or more, counted in the county the state record names; ten misspelt county names in the record are read as the county they name.
Of the 6,463 lakes of 10 acres or more, 5,189 carry a name in the state record, 1,203 are recorded as “no name” and 69 carry a description instead of a name, most often “sewage disposal pond” (43), “tailings pond” (7) and “industrial waste pond” (3); two have no record at all. Our county pages also take a name from the U.S. Geological Survey’s place-name record where a named point lies in or within 100 m of an unnamed outline. That names 42 more, so the county pages show 5,231 named lakes.
The commonest names among the 5,189 lakes the state names. A bracketed qualifier is dropped, so Mud Lake (north) counts as Mud Lake; Big and Little stay part of the name:
Mud Lake 118 · Long Lake 56 · Round Lake 43 · Bass Lake 40 · Grass Lake 30 · Clear Lake 29 · Perch Lake 28 · Cranberry Lake 26 · Horseshoe Lake 26 · Twin Lake 26
Source: Michigan DNR hydrography, Lake Polygons layer (Michigan GIS Open Data), fetched 26 Oct 2026. Names: the state record, then U.S. Geological Survey GNIS, as on our county pages.
All 64,911 outlines together cover 877,127 acres, about 1,371 square miles. Lakes of 10 acres or more hold 91% of that water; the ten largest alone hold 17%. Lakes under 10 acres are 90% of the count and 9% of the area.
Source: Michigan DNR hydrography, Lake Polygons layer (Michigan GIS Open Data), fetched 26 Oct 2026. Acres as the state computes them from each outline.
The count comes from the lake-polygon layer of Michigan DNR hydrography. The layer holds 70,416 shapes: 64,911 are lakes and ponds, 5,470 are islands and 35 are stretches of stream; only the lakes are counted. The Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair are not in this layer, so they are not counted: its largest outline is Houghton Lake, at 20,075 acres. The DNR keeps the Great Lakes connecting channels in a separate layer.
The layer does not separate natural lakes from reservoirs, mill ponds or flooded pits, so all are counted. Its notes field marks 144 of the lakes of 10 acres or more as gravel pits, 174 as wetland lakes or ponds and 22 as reservoirs; most carry no note. 8,830 outlines carry a county in the record, nearly all with a lake number and a name or label; the other 56,081 are outlines with an acreage and little else, and all but two of those are under 10 acres. Where the state splits one lake into two outlines under one lake number, which it does for eight lake numbers among the lakes of 10 acres or more, each outline counts once.
Acreage is the area of the state’s outline, a map figure rather than a survey of today’s shoreline. Each county page counts its lakes of 10 acres or more and lists the named ones; all are reached from the Michigan index.
Source: Michigan DNR hydrography, Lake Polygons layer (Michigan GIS Open Data), fetched 26 Oct 2026. Layer list of the DNR Hydrology open-data service (Lake Deep Points, Inland Lake Contours, Hydro Line, Hydro Poly, Great Lakes Connecting Channels), read 26 Oct 2026.