Lake Macatawa is located in Holland, Michigan. It is a popular lake for swimming, boating, fishing, sailing, wind surfing, tubing, paddle boarding, and water-skiing.
From the michigan.gov document listed on the geocaching site:
Drowned River Mouth
As the glaciers melted in Michigan 13,000 years ago, rivers formed and drained into lakes. One of these rivers flowed near where you stand today. Before Lake Macatawa existed, it was a river that drained glacial melt into what is now known as Lake Michigan.
Around 11,200 years ago, the water level in Lake Michigan dropped significantly due to new drainage channels that opened up to the north. When the water level of Lake Michigan dropped the flow of the river rapidly increased and gouged out the Lake Macatawa basin. A large amount of soil was washed out of the Lake Macatawa basin into Lake Michgian. Much of that soil was sand, which helped form the dune you are standing on today.
About 6,300 years ago, the drainage channels that drained Lake Michigan began to close and Lake Michigan began to fill back up close to its current level. The rising lake level also filled in the gouged out Lake Macatawa basin forming Lake Macatawa. The river that once existed here became a lake. This is known as a drowned river mouth because the river that once existed, after gouging out the basin, filled in with water and had been “drowned.”
Originally, the river that is now Lake Macatawa drained into Lake Michigan north of where you are standing. If you look east of your location you can see the natural depression behind the dune that contained the original drainage channel. This area most likely had a vibrant wetland dynamic and was a natural flood plain.
When the settlers arrived in the 19th century they dug a more direct channel into Lake Michigan for commercial reasons. Prior to this channel being dug, the natural channel was a shallow river that meandered north before emptying into Lake Michigan.
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Lake Macatawa is a lake in Ottawa County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The lake is about 6 miles long with a maximum width of 1.2 miles and a surface area of 1.700 acres. The average depth of the lake is variable but generally less than 10 feet, excluding a navigation channel of fixed depth that crosses the lake to allow deep draft ships to access the dock at the City of Holland. The lake occupies portions of Park Township, Holland Township, and the City of Holland. The lake contains two bays of significant size: Big Bay, and the smaller Pine Creek Bay to the east. The lake is the drowned river mouth of the Macatawa River formerly known as the Black River, which feeds into the lakes eastern end in the City of Holland. Other tributaries include Pine Creek, which feeds into Pine Creek Bay, and Winstrom Creek, which feeds into Big Bay. The lake discharges into Lake Michigan at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channel near Holland State Park. The lake and its watershed encompass 114.560 acres 464 km 2 of Ottawa and Allegan counties. The eastern end of the lake is marked by industrial development within the City of Holland, and includes a coal-fired power plant, scrap metal recycling facility, environmental research facility owned by Michigan State University, aggregate mineral loading dock, and a pickle production facility owned by the H.J. Heinz company. The remainder of the lakeshore is marked by high-income residential development, with the notable exception of Holland State Park which borders the northern shoreline of the western end of the lake, Howard B. Dunton park on the north shore of the eastern end, and Kollen Park near the Heinz factory, which connects to a boardwalk installed along the shoreline occupied by the facility.
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