The Flat River is a tributary of the Grand River in the western part of the U.S. state of Michigan. It rises as the outflow of the six lakes (Six Lakes) system in Belvidere Township, west of Edmore in Montcalm County. It flows mostly south and slightly west through Montcalm County, Ionia County, and Kent County, flowing into the Grand River in Lowell. Other cities it flows through along the way include Greenville and Belding.
Two historic covered bridges cross the river. One, the Fallasburg Bridge, in Vergennes Township, Kent County is in Fallasburg County Park a few miles north of Lowell. The other, Whites Bridge is a few miles to the northeast in adjacent northwest Keene Township, Ionia County, near Smyrna.
There are 5 dams along the river: Greenville, Belding, Whites Bridge, Burroughs and Lowell.
It is the river named in the song "Sad Ballad of Jack Haggerty", sometimes known as "Flat River Girl."
Famous quotes containing the words flat and/or river:
“It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)