Higgins Lake, Michigan 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Depth Chart
How the Water Becomes Wood
A chart is a stack of flat sheets until the water's real soundings tell it what shape to take.
- SurveyReal bathymetric sounding data sets every contour line before a single cut is made.
- CutEach depth band is laser-cut from its own sheet of Baltic birch, up to nine layers deep.
- StainWater layers are stained by hand, reading darker the deeper the water runs.
- StackThe sheets are registered and stacked in sequence, and the bed's true shape rises out of the wood.
- EtchDepths and place names are burned into the grain itself, never printed on it.
- FrameA solid Baltic birch frame and acrylic glass finish the piece, ready to hang.
Higgins Lake in layered Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches, every depth contour laser-cut and stacked so the lake's famously clear basin reads as real relief in the wood.
Spring-fed and startlingly transparent, Higgins drops to about 135 feet, and its water clarity has been drawing the same families back to Roscommon County for over a century. Two state parks bracket its shores, and out in the middle sits the spot every local boat eventually points toward: the sunken island, a shoal that rises from deep water to within a few feet of the surface. On the chart it appears exactly as regulars know it, a small tower of birch layers climbing out of the deep basin, the anchoring spot rendered in wood.
Contours are cut one sheet at a time and stacked by hand, with names engraved rather than printed, acrylic glass over the face, and a solid Baltic birch frame.
People raised on Higgins tend to be lifelong evangelists for it. This is the piece they point at while making the argument.
North and South Higgins Lake State Parks anchor opposite shores, with Roscommon a few miles east. Its bigger, busier neighbor Houghton Lake lies just south, a completely different lake in character and a natural companion piece.
- 24.5 × 31 in
- Solid Baltic birch frame
- Acrylic glass front, ready to hang
- Free next-business-day shipping on orders placed by 2 PM EST
- 14-day returns
Live from the water