Personal recollections:
My family owned a cottage on the Tittabawassee River in this little town when I was growing up. My best childhood memories are of this place as they are among the few vibrant memories I have of spending time with my dad, who passed away when I was 8 years old. We had a Mirrocraft aluminum runabout boat with a 75HP Mercury outboard on it that we kept out on the dock by the river. We spent many days in the summer going up and down the river. I wasn't old enough to ski but the rest of my family did.
The cottage we had was modest, built for a couple of grand at the time by my dad and his friends. It had 2 "bedrooms" and a main room with a pot belly stove for heat. There was no running water so we had an outdoor pump. No indoor plumbing meant we had an outhouse. It would probably drive me nuts to live in that situation now but back then it was the best place in the world.
The town had a couple of stores and there was one on the lake called Flander's, complete with gas pumps to fill your boat. I remember seeing it out of the car window as a kid and I knew that meant we were close to the cottage. Eventually my mom had to sell the place after my dad passed away because it became too much work. The boat got sold as well a few years later although we took it out on Cass Lake occasionally.
Our old cottage still stands (photo below) but it has been converted to a tri-level year-round home. The entire area looks different as large houses have gone up on the water and most of the old evergreen trees have been cleared. When the dams broke in 2020, that dried up the river but hopefully that will be remedied.
From Wikipedia:
Edenville is a small unincorporated community in Edenville Township, Midland County in the U.S. state of Michigan.
The community is in the northeast corner of the township near the boundary with Gladwin County, but the settlement is mostly within Midland County. It is on M-30, about 15 miles northwest of Midland.
Edenville is situated on the east side of the Tittabawassee River, opposite the point where the Tobacco River flows into the Tittabawassee. The Edenville Dam is less than a mile north and blocks the flow of both rivers to form Wixom Lake. The dam and Wixom Lake are almost entirely within Gladwin County. Settlement has extended northward from Edenville along M-30 and the Tobacco River shores of the lake which is sometimes associated with Edenville, although it is actually part of Tobacco Township.
The community is at 43°47′58″N 84°22′54″W, which is about a mile west of the meridian used for the surveying of Michigan in the early 19th century. Just south of town, M-30 turns east before turning south again to run almost directly on the meridian into Sanford. The community was founded in 1854.
The area serves as a popular spring and summer time resort for locals as it is located near Wixom Lake, which is used for fishing and recreational use. Most boat access sites for the lake are located in Gladwin County.
In May 2020, the Edenville Dam in Edenville, Michigan, collapsed due to static liquefaction of the dam's embankment after heavy rains caused Wixom Lake to rise to record levels. This triggered a catastrophic flood that damaged or destroyed over 2,500 homes and businesses and forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people. The breach wave from Edenville also overwhelmed and caused the failure of the Sanford Dam downstream