Do you know of Wood Lake ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Wood Lake. 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 Wood Lake.

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

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.

Communities Also Named Wood Lake ...

We found six communities that share the name Wood Lake.

Within Michigan, the name Wood Lake is unique.

Beyond Michigan, we know of another six communities that are located throughout in the United States.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Florida
  - Hillsborough County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Florida community of Wood Lake [Hillsborough County].
- Louisiana
  - Saint Bernard Parish
  - Please visit our profile page for the Louisiana community of Wood Lake [Saint Bernard Parish].
- Minnesota
  - Yellow Medicine County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Minnesota community of Wood Lake [Yellow Medicine County].
- Nebraska
  - Cherry County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Nebraska community of Wood Lake [Cherry County].
- South Carolina
  - Beaufort County
  - Please visit our profile page for the South Carolina community of Wood Lake [Beaufort County].
- Wisconsin
  - Burnett County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Wisconsin community of Wood Lake [Burnett County].

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Wood Lake ...

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

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 Wood Lake - Services available: had a Post Office, Railroad Station, Express Office

More Orphans in Montcalm 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 Montcalm County.

Footnotes ...

<1>

If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Mile's to see Pete ... Mile's is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that Wood Lake could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.