Arcadia Creek

Kalamazoo's Unseen Stream

While the nearby Kalamazoo River is the most recognizable geological feature in the county, one could make the claim that the far more diminutive Arcadia Creek is the more important to the historical development of the city of Kalamazoo, at least its first thirty years. Ironically, many local residents and downtown shoppers would be hard pressed to point out the location of the purling creek. Many have never heard of it at all.

“Arcadia Creek played an important role in the early industrialization activity in Kalamazoo. It furnished power for the Gardener T. Eames machine shop at Oakland Drive and Michigan Avenue, birthplace of Kalamazoo’s Atlas Press, now called the Clausing Corp.”

The creek turned the waterwheel for the Jesse Turner sawmill on N. Edwards Street, gave birth to Kalamazoo’s first ice company, owned and operated by Chester Root who built an icehouse just east of the present Waldo Stadium, and it supplied waterpower for several lesser concerns.”

Kalamazoo Gazette, 18 June 1978

It was on its fertile banks that Titus Bronson first settled in 1830, and where he built his log cabin. It was Bronson who gave the creek its mythic name, one suggestive of an idyllic and peaceful place. Yet overtime, the once-pretty brook became concealed and buried by streets and buildings as the small village evolved into an industrial city. A century after Bronson arrived and settled the town, the onetime picturesque creek that had provided foundries, mills and machine shops with their power source had become little more than a “subterranean ditch” comprised of concrete conduits and culverts. Even so, the water from the creek served a variety of commercial and public needs, including a vital source for putting out fires. The creek also served as the source for ice blocks, cut during the winter months and used during the summer. There were also swimming holes for children to explore for fun and adventure.

“It was used as the power of numerous small enterprises, turning lathes, chair and cabinet works, planing mills and wood-carving machines. Thus the village could not change the course of the stream to take the water from its users and was forced to be content with the water after it had passed the last mill.

The creek begins west of the city, east of Drake Road, between W. Michigan Avenue and Stadium Drive, and travels eastward toward the Kalamazoo River, culminating just north of the E. Michigan Avenue bridge. As it moves eastward along Stadium Drive, it zigs and zags underneath the road, flowing on both sides of the roadway, crossing under railroad tracks with its presence rarely known. It flows through Kalamazoo Christian High School’s campus before reappearing on the other side of Howard Street, next to the Stadium Drive Apartments. From there it flows toward Western Michigan University’s Waldo Stadium, an area of land that before it was drained (around 1910) in order to construct college buildings and the athletic field, was once a trout-filled pond known as the Wattles Farm. This would be one of many efforts over the years to manipulate the creek’s natural flow, a process of modification that allowed for commercial and residential development. Before the Wattles family owned the property, the Kalamazoo Steam Brewery utilized the water for its operations from the 1860s to the early 1880s.

Running with fewer obstacles, the mid-19th century creek occasionally formed small ponds along the way toward emptying into the Kalamazoo River. One of these was in between Academy and Lovell streets, known as Mirror Lake. The other small pool of swamp water was in between Elm Street and Allen Boulevard, just south of the Michigan Central Railroad tracks.

For about two decades, beginning in 1873, village and city officials worked diligently to bury the creek’s presence. Modernization and industrialization took from the creek to build personal wealth and community development, but in doing so, the creek’s existence also led to efforts to divert its inconvenient contours and mute its more problematic qualities. During these years the once visible body of water was canalized and buried beneath downtown Kalamazoo in an effort to address the drainage problems posed by periodic flooding. Overtime the canal walls would fail, resulting in flooded buildings. Eventually the federal government deemed downtown Kalamazoo a floodplain, forcing city preservationists, planners and engineers to seek long-term solutions.

It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990’s when the various Arcadia Creek redevelopment projects daylighted portions of the creek from entombment, widened and deepened it, culminating in the Arcadia Creek Pond and festival site. From the festival site, the creek meanders easterly toward the river, mostly obscured by concrete, and eventually running its course near the Michigan Central railroad tracks. For more about the Arcadia Creek and its curious history, check out this entertaining Youtube video made by a couple who recently explored the creek’s hidden character.

Written by Ryan Gage, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, April 2025