kalamazoo history

As Kalamazoo residents and others, like tourists, begin to return to normal life, a little sprucing up is taking place as part of the welcome back. Bell's Eccentric Cafe has a new mural that is on display on its west side wall.

The Kalamazoo Public Library has invited locals to share their memories surrounding the library and participate in their 150th Anniversary Celebration

I love finding items like this. I guess maybe I should be an American Picker. I was poking around on the Library of Congress digital collections site, and ran across this find, a 1908 drawing of a birds eye view of Kalamazoo.

Nearly 150 years later, Kalamazoo continues to look to the future to provide a more just and equitable community with initiatives like Imagine Kalamazoo, which would have been on the forefront of an out-of-the-box experiment like a tax funded high school.

If we did a Mount Rushmore for Kalamazoo, whose faces would you put on it? That’s where this gets to be fun. The narrowing down process would probably start a good bar or classroom argument or two.

Here's a "Throw Back Thursday" curiosity. Did you know there was a song titled "Sprinkle Road to Cork Street," and it was recorded by a band with some famous names attached to it?

The remains of a King Folding Boat were identified during the 2017 Hidden Kalamazoo tour and may be one of the only boats of its kind left.

What was Kalamazoo like during the Golden Age of Hollywood and the Great Depression? Take a look at this incredibly well-preserved 1930s era souvenir photo book.

An interesting topic came up recently on the Vanished Kalamazoo Facebook group, are there still old drinking fountains around town? We set out to find them if they still exist.