Kalamazoo County Government history

The town of Bronson was officially designated the county seat on May 1, 1831.

In 1832 Justus Burdick purchased one-half of the community from Bronson for $850.

Another treaty with the Native Americans in 1833 arranged the exchange of five million acres of their land for $40,000 in trinkets and trappings.

The transfer of the land office from White Pigeon, St Joseph County, to Bronson in 1834 boosted the community's growth.

Michigan's first State Constitution was adopted in 1835.

In 1836 the land office sold 1.6 million acres and collected $2 million in receipts-more than any other land office in the nation.

Patented in 1837, the harvester cut a fourteen-foot swath and was drawn by sixteen horses with four drivers.

The first plank roads were built around 1845 with the most important one stretching from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids.

The arrival of the railroad in Kalamazoo in 1846 enhanced the county's agricultural potential, though it made the barge system obsolete.

As early as 1850 an iron furnace to smelt bog ore was founded in the county.

Taking advantage of the area's bountiful water resources, in 1867 the Kalamazoo Paper Company opened its first mill.

In 1884, the Village of Kalamazoo adopted a charter and was incorporated as a city.

After the Civil War, paper manufacturers began setting up shop in the Kalamazoo River Valley and in 1886 the Upjohn Drug Company (later Pharmacia & Upjohn and now Pfizer), one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical firms, was founded.

Kalamazoo's devotion to education is evident in prestigious Kalamazoo College and its much larger neighbor, Western Michigan University, which was founded in 1903.

The city instated a commission-manager form of government in 1918, one of the first cities in the United States to adopt this style of local government.

While manufacturing dominated Kalamazoo County (in 1920 Kalamazoo ranked fourth behind Wayne, Kent and Saginaw counties in the number of manufacturing establishments), agriculture remained important.

For further information on the history of Kalamazoo County and its communities, the book Kalamazoo and How it Grew by Willis F. Dunbar, Western Michigan University, 1959, is very helpful.

The fund was dedicated in 1987, during the sesquicentennial celebration of Michigan’s statehood, by Mary Frances Miller Patton and her husband, Major General John S. Patton.