Hope, Michigan: A tale of two hopeful places, one recovering from an epic disaster.
HOPE TOWNSHIPS, Michigan ‒ Lori and Richard Stade built their dream retirement home off a canal where they fished for bass and bluegill and took their grandchildren boating in what was known as "pontoon alley."
“You couldn’t ask for a nicer place to retire,” said Lori Stade, 67, a former travel agent and high school Spanish teacher. “It’s a vacation spot. It’s agricultural. It’s family-oriented.”
But when the water disappeared in Wixom Lake and its canals in May 2020, residents of this town called Hope in Midland County lost some of theirs.
That spring, heavy rainfall unleashed a flood of raging water that gushed downstream, causing at least $200 million in damage as it took out two dams, crashed into a bridge and forced roughly 10,000 people in two counties to evacuate.
“It was like something out of a disaster movie,” Stade said.
What was left behind was a hollowed-out gash of earth resembling a sandy moonscape littered with debris – planks of wood from docks, twisted hoists, overturned boats. It was almost as if a plug had been yanked from a bathtub drain.
In the Great Lakes State, access to water marks a dividing line between the haves and the have-nots.
Michigan boasts nearly 3,300 linear miles of freshwater coastline – more than any other state in the U.S. No matter where you are in this state, you’re never more than six miles from a source of fresh water – whether it’s a lake or a stream, canal or a pond – and never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.
From May to September, boaters zigzag the lakes in speedboats with squealing kids towed behind on innertubes or water skis.
Stade and her husband, a Ford Motor Co. retiree, believed they had built their own Michigan dream when they dug the foundation for their log cabin at the end of a canal. When the water disappeared, property values sank, along with the economic stability of those who lived and played along the nearby lake shores.
This summer, Paste BN reporters visited six towns called Hope in search of stories about Americans’ triumphs and struggles and what gives them hope in this time of political division.
Stade hasn’t given up. She and her husband are watching and waiting as a legal battle wages over refilling the lake their hopes were built on.
“We’re never going to move," she said. "We put our blood, sweat and tears into this place.”
From Hope to Hell and back again
There is a whole lot of “Hope” in Michigan.
A second Hope Township lies 140 miles southwest of the Stades' home. Michigan is also home to the village of Port Hope on the shores of Lake Huron, Hope College on its western coast, a pair of lakes named Hope and a town called Hope Creek.
There’s a bit of Hell, too. About 60 miles northwest of Detroit, nestled between the state’s two biggest college campuses, lies the tiny hamlet of Hell. It often is the butt of jokes during cold snaps, when “Hell freezes over,” and during heat waves, when a newscaster declares it’s “hotter than Hell.”
The two Hope Townships are agricultural communities that have leaned politically conservative for decades, although the state – known affectionately as the “Mitten” for its shape – favored Democrats in presidential elections from 1988 to 2016.
Jeanne Hope lives in the other Hope Township, in Barry County. Like Stade, she is 67 and retired.
A divorced mother of three grown children, a grandmother of seven and a soon-to-be great-grandmother, Hope likes to ride her Yamaha V Star 950 motorcycle along the township's windy two-lane roads lined with U.S. flags.
“I love it here,” she said. “We’re not ‘Don’t talk to me, leave me alone.’ It’s more like ‘Hey, what do you need?’ That’s something this country needs more of. More caring about each other.”
In her Hope Township, she said, “if you need help, somebody is likely there for you. If they can’t, they know somebody who can.”
Three years ago, Hope and other area bikers created a charity motorcycle ride for a friend in nearby Prairieville who was about to lose his home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We got a police escort and everything,” Hope remembered. “We raised around $21,000. It felt like everybody pitched in.”
The close-knit community helped her when she needed it, too. At one point, she struggled with alcoholism, Hope said, citing the stress of her divorce and trying to pay the bills while working two jobs. Her friends and neighbors supported her through eight years of sobriety as she now helps others with similar challenges.
“When I get teased by everybody about my last name, I say there is always hope. Nothing is ever too far gone that you can’t find a bright side somewhere,” she said. “There’s got to be hope, or why are we even here in the first place?”
The swingiest of swing states
Michigan’s status among the swingiest of swing states began when Donald Trump flipped the Mitten red when he defeated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, winning by just 10,704 votes – roughly two-tenths of 1%, the closest margin of any state in the U.S.
It was cemented in the 2020 presidential election, when former Vice President Joe Biden reclaimed the White House for Democrats, winning Michigan by 154,188 votes.
Though Biden took Michigan in 2020, he wasn’t the top vote-getter in either of the state’s Hopes.
That title went to Trump, who snagged about 70% of the votes in Midland County’s Hope (641 of the 914 ballots cast) and 65% in Barry County’s Hope (1,253 of the 1,915 ballots cast).
Although both live in deep red communities, neither Stade nor Hope is excited about another Trump presidency.
Stade was uninspired about the idea of four more years of Biden as president and was pleased when Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the ticket.
“I like Kamala very much,” Stade said. “I think a woman president like Kamala would be wonderful because she just shows a lot of potential to make our country a nice country, and bring it back to the people. … For people like me, the working class, she will give us a lot more hope as the president."
As of early September, Hope remained undecided about who she'd support for president.
“I’m still trying to figure out what way will be best for this country,” Hope said, voice rising. “And since we can’t turn back the clock, we have to deal with what we have now and that’s who is the lesser of two evils.”
Politics, and the debates that come with it, can be aggravating, she said.
Hope lives with her youngest son, Brad, a 38-year-old county sewer worker, his wife, Penny, a paraprofessional at a middle school in Delton, and her two grandsons in a three-bedroom house on 2.5 acres. They recently scraped together the money for an above-ground pool.
The family lives on about $80,000 a year, between the county's household average of about $75,000 and the township's even higher $85,000. Hope said they feel the pressure from inflation and the current high cost of groceries.
To help offset costs, they keep a chicken coop with more than 30 birds. The chickens provide so many eggs, the family give a lot away, even though “buying the feed ain’t cheap,” Hope said.
“We’re neither the ‘haves nor have-nots,’” Hope said. “We’re somewhere in between. A steak dinner is a privilege. We all watch what we spend.”
Failed dams, fallen dreams
The Stades fell in love with mid-Michigan’s lakes in the 1980s, and the seemingly endless fields of farmland around them, where roadside stands sell homegrown tomatoes and peaches, cabbage, beans and fresh-laid eggs. It’s where life is slower, and there isn’t any rush-hour traffic – unless you count getting stuck behind a big-wheeled tractor rolling down a rural road.
Eventually, the Stades saved enough money to buy a sliver of waterfront land in Hope, which is so small, the downtown isn’t a downtown at all, as much as a tiny cluster of buildings near the intersection of North Hope and East Hull roads – a church, post office, fire station and white-sided township hall.
With the help of friends and family, the Stades built their future retirement retreat in a single summer. The log cabin has a bedroom on the main floor, an upstairs loft and a basement that opens out to the canal.
“We paid $12,000 for this little lot,” Stade said. “We ordered the logs from a company in northern Michigan, and they all came like Lincoln Logs, labeled A, B, C, D.”
Now, her seawall drops about seven feet into a mucky gully filled with cattails, brush and weeds.
No one knows exactly when the water will return to Wixom Lake. Litigation over who should foot the bill has slowed progress on restoration of the dams and the reservoirs and canals they created.
Boyce Hydro Power LLC privately owned the Edenville Dam when it failed. After the disaster, Boyce filed for bankruptcy protection. And last year, its former operator, Lee Mueller, was ordered to pay almost $120 million in environmental damages.
Federal and state grants and private donations have provided nearly $250 million toward repairs, but the cost is expected to be far more.
Property owners along the lakes will be taxed annually over the next 40 years. The fee will depend on property size and water access, but the average cost will be about $2,160 per lot per year, said Taylor Trapani, a spokesperson for the Four Lakes Task Force, which is overseeing the repairs.
“Some people are trying to fight it,” Stade said. She shook her head.
Even without legal delays, the best estimate for a return of water to Wixom Lake is August 2027, plus or minus six months, Trapani said.
The Stades have sold their pontoon boat and wonder how much longer their neighbors, especially those who are older, can hold on. Instead of fishing and boating, Stade spends her summers sewing stuffed Humpty Dumpty dolls, aprons, potholders and baby blankets. She sells them at a farmers’ market.
Still, she’s optimistic.
In the backyard of their log cabin in Hope, an old, blue-bottomed paddle boat leans on its side against a porch post. It’s a visual reminder of what was lost, and what might be once more.
“The water will come back, and people will start coming back up here again and the economy hopefully will get better,” Stade said. “That's all you can hope for.”