The Clam Lake Canal (sometimes called the Cadillac Canal) is a man-made 0.33 mile (0.53 km) long canal between Lake Mitchell and Lake Cadillac in Cadillac, Michigan. It was made by George A. Mitchell, the founder of the city of Cadillac (as the Village of Clam Lake), in the 1870s. The main purpose of the man-made canal was to facilitate the movement of logs to sawmills. Mitchell was a businessman, merchant, railwayman, lumber baron, and real estate developer who needed lumber to build the village, and saw the potential for further sawmill development. The canal displayed an unusual mystery soon after it was constructed: it freezes over in the first part of the winter, when the lakes on each side of it are unfrozen. Then, when the adjacent lakes freeze over with thick ice, the canal in between thaws. Background In 1873, George A. Mitchell paid $2,000 ($ today) to purchase a strip of land between Little Clam Lake and Big Clam Lake. Little Clam Lake is now known as Lake Cadillac and Big Clam Lake is now known as Lake Mitchell, named after Mitchell's nephew and partner William W. Mitchell. The strip already connected these lakes via the easterly flowing Black Creek, which Mitchell envisioned as an efficient transportation route for logs once the canal was constructed. He dredged the creek, but it was inadequate for floating the harvested timbers from Big Clam Lake to Little Clam Lake and to his mills in Cadillac, so he went about constructing a new canal a few hundred feet south. He noted the prevailing westerly winds, and the natural flow of the water to the northeast corner of Little Clam Lake, that would work to his advantage. Mitchell first persuaded the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad to change their original route layout between the lakes, redirecting it to the eastern end of the Little Clam Lake, in the southeast corner of Wexford County, Michigan. He was a stockholder in the railroad company and a future director, and this helped his success. He then formed the Clam Lake Improvement and Construction Company with $10,000 in capital stock, and developed a canal. It is 0.33 miles (0.53 km) long, and some wide. The main reason for the canal's development was to float logs from one lake to the other and collect fees for the usage of the waterway. The logs were then taken to