Onekama ( oh-NEK-ə-mə) is a village in Manistee County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 399 at the 2020 census. The village is located on the shores of Portage Lake and is amid Onekama Township. The town’s publish is derived from “Ona-ga-maa,” an Anishinaabe word which means “singing water.”

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total Place of 0.58 square miles (1.50 km), all land. The M-22 highway runs through downtown Onekama.

The predecessor of the village of Onekama was the concurrence of Portage at Portage Point, first usual in 1845, at the western decrease of Portage, at the outlet of Portage Creek. In 1871, when landowners on the land-locked lake became exasperated bearing in mind the practices of the Portage Sawmill, they took the solution into their own hands and dug a channel through the narrow isthmus, opening a waterway that lowered the lake by 12 to 14 feet and brought it to the thesame level as Lake Michigan. When this be in dried out Portage Creek on 14 May 1871, the settlement, which had only the week in the past been designated as Onekama with a Post Office below that name, moved to the in the past submerged home at the northwestern shore of the lake close an earlier deal called “Brookfield”.

In 1880, the first public buildings were built in the supplementary village. These included the Pierce Grist Mill and The Gibert Brothers’ Saw Mill. In 1882, the first educational was built adjacent to the present-day Congregational Church. In 1883, a large summer hotel, The Glen House, was built close the Glen, with its three mineral springs that were believed to have medicinal value.