Oshtemo Village

Kalamazoo County Center of Commerce

Oshtemo (a name said to be derived from a Potawatomi word meaning “headwaters”) is a township in the western portion of Kalamazoo County – 36 square miles in 36 sections, defined as Town 2 South, Range 12 West. Oshtemo shares its borders with the townships of Alamo to the north, Kalamazoo to the east, Texas to the south, and Van Buren County to the west. The land was surveyed in 1830, and settlement soon followed. Among the earliest pioneers to arrive in Oshtemo were Enoch and Deborah Harris, the first black settlers in Kalamazoo County. In March 1839, the Michigan Legislature officially established Oshtemo as an independent township.

In March 1842, Mortimer Fuller purchased 60 acres in the northeast quarter of Section 35 near the present intersection of Stadium Drive and South 9th Street, along the western edge of the fertile Genesee Prairie. Fuller laid out a portion of the land in village lots and several buildings were erected. Harding Tuttle opened the first grocery store there, and Aradle Balch (son of Nathaniel Balch) built the first dry goods store and warehouse. Still, nothing much happened until the railroad came through.

The Michigan Central Railroad, then owned by the State of Michigan, originated in Detroit and arrived in Kalamazoo in February 1846. In September that year, the state sold the railroad line to a private firm and the construction work continued westward from Kalamazoo toward Chicago.

In March 1847, the Michigan Central Railroad Company purchased right of way from Fuller and others, which allowed the line to cross through the southeast portion of Oshtemo Township. The tracks ran somewhat south of Territorial Road (Stadium Drive), crossing Fuller’s property near the intersection of Oshtemo Road (a.k.a. Asylum Street or Prairie Street, today’s Parkview Avenue). A small depot was erected next to the tracks at the south end of the village.

By 1861, a north-south road followed the Section 35 centerline from the village center into Texas Township. The Methodist Church was erected that same year on the north side of Territorial Road, followed by a two-story brick school on the opposite side of the road in 1870. William Tuttle and Mortimer Fuller were primary landowners in the village proper by then, with the farms of Enoch Harris and William Price to the east, and John Rickard’s place to the west. Eason & Balch (probably John Eason and Aradle Balch) and Conrad Miller were village merchants at the time. Harding Tuttle was an early grocer; Charles Clapp and William Drummond were carpenters and joiners; Stowel Dimick, Asa McCreedy, and John Rickard were nearby farmers. Both the church and the school building stand today as relics of this bygone era.

By 1873, Oshtemo was booming. Daniel Divers, the first postmaster in the village, operated a dry-goods store and post office on the north side of the Michigan Central tracks across from the depot, a short distance west of Maple Street (now South 9th Street). Oliver Atwater’s cider mill stood on the north side of Oshtemo Road across from Enoch Harris’s place.

By the end of the decade, Charles Clapp had opened a hotel, livery stable, and a dry goods store in the center of the village. Ashley Clapp and C.S. Burr & Co. were proprietors of grocery and drug stores at that time. There were two wagon shops in town by then, along with two blacksmith shops, a harness shop, a basket factory, a lumber dealer, a warehouse and grain elevator, a creamery, a telegraph office, several horse and cattle breeders, and a number of small farms.

By the year 1900, significant changes were on the horizon. As freight and passenger service on the Michigan Central line increased, the steep hills west of Kalamazoo, known as the “Oshtemo grade,” became difficult for the heavier trains to climb. Michigan Central solved the problem in 1905 by rerouting its tracks to the north along KL Avenue and westward around the steep hills (today’s Amtrak route). The old rail line between Kalamazoo and Mattawan was abandoned and Oshtemo Village was to be replaced by a new town called Miller (or Miller’s Station) where the new tracks crossed West ML Avenue.

But the “town” of Miller never happened. Hoping to start his own electric interurban railroad, Samuel Dunkley purchased the abandoned Michigan Central line through Oshtemo and re-opened the route in 1906 as the Kalamazoo, Lake Shore & Chicago Railway. Thanks to Dunkley’s new “Fruit Belt Line,” the village of Oshtemo didn’t perish as many had feared, while Miller Station was relegated to become little more than a coal yard and passenger stop along the Michigan Central line.

After years of declining ridership, the Fruit Belt Line was discontinued in November 1924, and the tracks were torn up the following year. Meanwhile, automobile use grew dramatically after the First World War, which fueled the demand for more and better roads. The quiet village of Oshtemo would see dramatic change with the paving and widening of the east-west thoroughfare, once known as Territorial Road.

During the 1920s, US-12 (the Detroit-Chicago Road) was rerouted through major industrial centers like Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo, to make a “super-highway” across southern Michigan between Detroit and St. Joseph. This, along with the US-12 “cutoff” project that created Stadium Drive during the 1930s, greatly increased the amount of automobile traffic through the village of Oshtemo. The era of horse-and-buggy travel along quiet dirt streets was gone forever.

Today, Oshtemo Charter Township is a vibrant residential and commercial community of nearly 24,000, alive with parks, trails, a public library, major retailers, auto dealerships, manufacturers, and commercial enterprises. A hiking trail is being established along the old Fruit Belt railway corridor west of the village, while Stadium Drive/Red Arrow Highway and South 9th Street continue to serve as major arteries across western Kalamazoo County.

Written by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, July 2026