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Lake Emma

Lake Emma is a small, undeveloped warm-water lake tucked into the conifer woods of southern Presque Isle County in Michigan's Northeastern Lower Peninsula. About six miles southwest of the village of Hawks, its roughly 190 surface acres stay quiet, dark-stained and fringed by wetlands rather than docks and resorts—the kind of place people seek out for unhurried fishing and paddling, not for a busy shoreline. What defines Lake Emma is how natural it feels. The shoreline is mostly undeveloped, dominated by evergreen forest and marshy edges, and the water itself is shallow—only about ten feet at its deepest—with the tea-colored tint that decaying conifer needles give many Northern Michigan lakes. A county-maintained control structure raises and extends the water across a flooded wetland meadow, more than doubling the open-water footprint of the original basin.