Kalamazoo, Michigan

Kalamazoo ( KAL-ə-mə-ZOO) is a city in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 73,598. It is the principal city of the Kalamazoo–Portage metropolitan area in southwestern Michigan, which had a population of 261,670 in 2020.

One of Kalamazoo's most notable features is the Kalamazoo Mall, an outdoor pedestrian shopping mall. The city created the mall in 1959 by closing part of Burdick Street to automobile traffic, although two of the mall's four blocks have been reopened to auto traffic since 1999. Kalamazoo is home to Western Michigan University, a large public university, Kalamazoo College, a private liberal arts college, and Kalamazoo Valley Community College, a two-year community college.

History

Etymology

Kalamazoo was originally known as Bronson, after Titus Bronson, its founder, who settled there in 1829. In 1836, it was renamed Kalamazoo after the river running by it (a name that had already been adopted by the county in 1830). The river's name derives from an Algonquian language and has been variously explained as meaning "boiling water", "mirage or reflecting river", "it smokes", and "otters beneath the surface". Virgil J. Vogel dismisses these as "etymological absurdit[ies]", favouring a meaning either of "it goes or runs fast" or "deep, still water" (and noting that different parts of the river could fit both of these descriptions).