From the time that the earliest English-speaking settlers arrived, the area has also been known as The Forks, because it is situated at the confluence of the north and south branches of the Kalamazoo River.

The park has a gazebo, picnic tables, and a small man-made waterfall that connects to a pond called Mill Pond which is part of the Northern Branch of the Kalamazoo River.

The name, which sounds unusual to English-speaking ears, has become a metonym for exotic places, as in the phrase " from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo ".

* National City ( Kalamazoo was formerly the corporate HQ of First of America Bank, which merged with National City Bank in 1997 ), National City has since been purchased and merged with PNC Bank which still maintains a large corporate building in Texas Township, and several downtown along with branches in the region.

The city's most prominent art museum is the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, whose collection has more than 3, 600 works and a focus on 20th-century American art.

Downtown is the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, a " hands-on " museum aimed largely at children ; it has a planetarium and a Challenger Learning Center.

The Kalamazoo Air Zoo, just south of town, has several dozen aircraft on display, from biplanes to jets.

* The Kalamazoo Wings ( aka K-Wings ) minor-pro hockey team plays games in Wings Stadium and has played since 1974.

The radio station is still owned by Kalamazoo Public Schools although the EFE program has been discontinued.

* Kalamazoo also has a freight service provided by Grand Elk Railroad running north to Grand Rapids, Michigan and south to Elkhart, Indiana.

The city of Kalamazoo, Michigan has four sister cities.

The nickname Island City has to do with a power canal which diverts a portion of the Kalamazoo River around the downtown area, causing it to be an island.

Coldwater has radio stations WTVB and WNWN-FM, whose studios are located south of town on Business Loop 69 that are part of the Kalamazoo radio area.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of, making it larger than the City of Kalamazoo.

For example Kalamazoo College men ’ s tennis has been a part of one that cannot be matched by any other college or university in America.

Since then, US Airways has also left Flint, Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids, leaving Detroit as the only Michigan destination served by US Airways.

The Gibson L-5 guitar was first produced in 1922 by Gibson Guitar Corporation, then of Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA under the direction of master luthier Lloyd Loar, and has been in production ever since.

Although today the river is cleaner, the persistent PCB contamination has led to Superfund designation of a section from Kalamazoo to Allegan Dam.

After the junction with M-40, the highway then enters Kalamazoo County and has an interchange with US Highway 131 ( US 131 ) just before entering the city of Kalamazoo on Main Street near the north side of the campus of Western Michigan University.

Smith has held command at sea in the aviation community at squadron and wing levels as well as major commands that included a deep draft vessel, the USS Kalamazoo ( AOR 6 ), before taking command of the aircraft carrier USS America ( CV 66 ) and subsequent command of Carrier Group 6 in 1986 as a flag officer.

Kalamazoo Valley Community College ( KVCC ) has locations in downtown Kalamazoo and southwest of Kalamazoo, in Texas Charter Township.

* Kal-Haven Trail, a multi-use trail converted from old rail line that runs from Kalamazoo to South Haven

It was developed with the rail road that ran in that general area from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo.

The rail line was converted into a rail trail and allows users to bike, hike or snowmobile between Kalamazoo and South Haven.

The new private corporation had committed to complete the railroad with T rail of not less than sixty pounds to the yard and also to replace the poorly built rails between Kalamazoo and Detroit with similar quality rail, as the state-built rail was of low quality.

The city of Kalamazoo and the city of Galesburg provide water and sanitary sewer service to the urban areas within the township.

The Kalamazoo Metro Transit public transportation system provides bus service within Comstock Township to the Kalamazoo Transportation Center in downtown Kalamazoo.

Service was commenced on March 16, 2003 with service to Kalamazoo, Michigan and Elmira, New York.

The operation sends out bulk mailings with offers and has call centers in Pittsburgh, PA and Kalamazoo, MI to handle this, and other PNC Bank customer service and sales calls.

* 1 Financial Parkway in Kalamazoo, MI-card services, sales & customer service call center

That has since become Charter Communications providing cable television service to the Kalamazoo area.

Normal service was resumed in 2008, with Chicago reclaiming their divisional title-the 7th in 8 years-ahead of Kalamazoo Outrage with an 8-2-6 record.

The forks of the Kalamazoo River provided power for mills, and Albion quickly became a mill town as well as an agricultural market.

As an example, in the 1990s, radio station WQLR in Kalamazoo, Michigan would give the weather ( provided by Accuweather ) at the top of the hour.

In Australia, hand cars or pump carts are commonly referred to as Kalamazoos after the Kalamazoo Manufacturing Company, which provided many examples to the Australian railway market.

' Kalamazoo guitars ', he said, ' used by radio hillbilly singers.

This new style is credited to mandolins designed and built by Orville Gibson, a Kalamazoo, Michigan luthier who founded the " Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co., Limited " in 1902.

The name for the Kalamazoo River was then known by Canadians and French as La rivière Kikanamaso.

In 2002, the Kalamazoo Public Library was named " Library of the Year " by Library Journal.

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1921, is directed by Raymond Harvey.

The United States Tennis Association Boys 18 and 16 National Tennis Championships are hosted every summer by Kalamazoo College.

Kalamazoo is served by one daily newspaper, the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Kalamazoo is served by highways I-94, US 131, M-43 and M-96.

The Kal-Haven Trail, heavily used by cyclists and snowmobilers, extends to downtown Kalamazoo.

Between that trailhead and South Haven the trail is run by Van Buren County, even the parts within Kalamazoo County.

It's known as the Kalamazoo River Valley Trail and is run by Kalamazoo County.

Probably the most famous and first was ( I've Got a Gal In ) Kalamazoo " ( 1942 ) by the Glenn Miller band with Tex Beneke.

In chronological order others include: " I've Been Everywhere " by Hank Snow ( 1962 ) ( album of the same title ) and Johnny Cash ( 1996 ) Unchained reworked from the original 1959 Geoff Mack Australian-place-names version made popular by the singer Lucky Starr ; " Down on the Corner " ( 1969 ) by Creedence Clearwater Revival on their fourth studio album, Willy and the Poor Boys covered by a dozen other groups ; " Kalamazoo " ( 1995 ) by Luna on Penthouse ; " Cold Rock a Party " ( 1997 ) by MC Lyte on Bad As I Wanna B ; " Kalamazoo " a song by the rock trio Primus on the 1997 Brown Album ; " Top of the World " by Rascalz ( 1999 ) on Global Warning ; " Kalamazoo ", a song by Ben Folds Five on the 2004 EP Super D ; " 65 Miles from Kalamazoo " ( 2008 ) by R. J. Miller ( a lament for a lost Gibson guitar and a metaphor about " an old girlfriend from Kalamazoo "); and " Kalamazoo " ( 2009 ) by Mike Craver on his album Shining Down.