Do you know of Ottawa Beach ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Ottawa Beach. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Ottawa Beach.

Our sources for Ottawa Beach (see Mentions and References below) indicate that it was a community with a post office by the same name. Unfortunately our sources aren't clear about the location of Ottawa Beach other than they indicate that Ottawa Beach would be found somewhere in Ottawa County, Michigan.

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened  in 1886 and closed  in 1947.

This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.

Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Ottawa Beach ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Ottawa Beach:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<1>

Along The Tracks, A Directory of Named Places on Michigan Railroads
Written by: Meints, Graydon M.
Published by Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University - 1987
(Available from Amazon.com)

Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

A note taken from the Shipper's Guide for Ottawa Beach - Services available: had a Post Office, Railroad Station

Rand McNally Map of Michigan (1911)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

The FIPS database contains an entry for Ottawa Beach.

Referenced FIPS Records ...

FIPS Code: 26/61700   (Place Name: Ottawa Beach)

County: Ottawa     (FIPS State/County: 26/139)

Class: U8

Identifies a populated place (in this case, Ottawa Beach) located wholly or substantially outside the boundaries of an incorporated place or CDP (Census Designated Place) but whose name has not been verified as authoritative by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

More Orphans in  Ottawa County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Ottawa County.