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Hesperia Dam, Michigan
Hesperia Dam is the top of the White River run — 4 anadromous species stack below it out of Lake Michigan.
Open in BirdTrout43.572776, -86.04068 · Oceana County · NID MI00678. Tap the map to open this water in the live app.
What the runs do here
Hesperia Dam is the anadromous ceiling for the White River — the top of the run out of Lake Michigan. Fish moving up from the lake stop here, which is 36.6 miles of river below this structure.
| Species | In the river | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Chinook salmon | Aug–Oct | Fish stage off the harbour through August and enter as the river cools; the run peaks in October. |
| Coho salmon | Sept–Nov | Overlaps the chinook run and holds later; peak October and November. |
| Steelhead | Oct–May | Two runs on one calendar — a fall push from October that winters in the river, and the spring run that peaks March through April. |
| Lake-run brown trout | Oct–Nov | The lake-run ecotype anglers call a coaster brown, though the word properly belongs to Lake Superior; a spring feeding push in May and the spawning run behind the salmon, peak October. |
Curated calendar guidance from state run-timing prose, not regulation and not an observation of this river on any day. MDNR run-timing guidance and Michigan Fishing Guide prose, curated.
Ceiling cited as: USACE NID MI00678 'Hesperia Dam', Village of Hesperia, River or Stream Name 'White River'
The structure
- Owner
- Village of Hesperia Local Government
- Purpose
- Recreation
- Completed
- 1977
- Type
- Earth
- Height
- 11 ft
- Length
- 328 ft
- Spillway
- Controlled, 78 ft wide
- Storage
- 450 acre-ft · 50 acre pool
- Condition
- Fair · Significant hazard potential
From the National Inventory of Dams (USACE). Hazard potential is a downstream-consequence classification, not a statement about the structure's condition.
The water above and below
- South Branch White River 0.67 mi from the dam · Cold transitional small river (MDNR VSEC) · typed Cold-transitional
Coldwater designation is the state's own classification. A dam sits on one river and this list is every designated reach within a mile and a half of it, so a tributary mouth shows up here too.
Water right now
No USGS temperature gauge we read reports within 20 miles of this dam, so this page has no live number for it. That is a gap in the gauge network, not a judgement about the water.
Getting to it
- Sengs 2.1 mi · canoe launch · White River - South Branch
- McLaren Lake 3.3 mi · boat launch · McLaren Lake
Public access sites near the dam, straight-line distance. A dam itself is private property unless its owner says otherwise; these are the places the state lists as open.
Fly shops nearby
- Parsley's Sport Shop 16.0 mi · Newaygo
- Pere Marquette River Lodge 23.2 mi · Baldwin
- Baldwin Bait & Tackle 24.4 mi · Baldwin
- Ed's Sport Shop 24.4 mi · Baldwin
- Johnson's Pere Marquette Lodge 25.0 mi · Baldwin