Home › Michigan › Kalamazoo County

Kalamazoo County, Michigan

Street maps, historic prints and keepsakes for 9 Kalamazoo County towns.

The oldest is Kalamazoo, established 1843. The largest by population is Kalamazoo (73,598).

Town	Established	Population
Augusta	–	864
Climax	–	712
Galesburg	1861	2,049
Kalamazoo	1843	73,598
Parchment	1939	1,926
Portage	1963	48,891
Prairie Ronde Township	–	2,369
Richland	–	946
Schoolcraft	–	1,466

About these towns

Augusta: The village is mostly within Ross Township, though a small portion extends south into Charleston Township.

Climax: In 1825, John Mullet was among the first white settlers in Climax, along with Calvin White (1831), and the Farnsworth brothers (1832) More Euro-American settlement of this area began in 1838.

Galesburg: Galesburg was established in 1835 originally with the name Morton. It was platted in 1837 when it was given its current name and incorporated as a village in 1861 and as a city in 1931.

Kalamazoo: 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).

Parchment: The Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company was founded in 1909. The founder, Jacob "Uncle Jake" Kindleberger, set up shop along the Kalamazoo River.

Portage: On May 7, 2024, the city was struck by a high-end EF2 tornado, causing significant damage to homes and properties. A FedEx distribution center was severely damaged after the tornado caused part of the roof to collapse.

Prairie Ronde Township: The township is named for its distinctive geographic feature, the Prairie Ronde, a 14,000-acre (57 km2) grassland and the largest of the eight prairies in what would become Kalamazoo County.

Richland: Richland is located in the middle of what was once the Gull Prairie, an upland area relatively free of trees and maintained by natural and man-made fires.

Schoolcraft: Euro-American settlement in the Schoolcraft area dates to 1828 (nine years before Michigan's admission to the Union), when Bazel Harrison moved his family from Ohio to present-day Prairie Ronde Township, becoming the first settler in the future Kalamazoo County.