a view of Saugatuck

A view of Saugatuck's waterfront on the Kalamazoo River (our B&B, the welcoming Twin Oaks Inn, is a five-minutes walk from this spot).

Saugatuck derives from an old Native American word and it literally means "mouth of the river".

As you have probably guessed, Kalamazoo also derives from an old Native American word, probably based on the language spoken by the Potawami tribes that lived in this area before European settlers arrived (the basin of the river has been inhabited for at least the past 11,000 years).

There is a big dispute as to the meaning of Kalamazoo though. Some locals say that it means "boiling water", others "smokey water", others "reflecting waters", others "otter tail", others still "the place where wounded animals by Indians come to die". I think the meanings involving water have a better chance of being accurate, although the latter suggestion does have a certain legendary appeal to it... Anyway, nowadays it is a river that pours into Lake Michigan and it is also the name of a town in the region.

"(...) Saugatuck-Douglas became a popular tourist destination in the early 1800's. By 1880, Chicago and St. Louis natives commonly traveled to the Saugatuck-Douglas lakeshore to escape the summer heat, but the area's turning point came in 1910, when artists from the Chicago Art Institute established the Summer School of Painting on the Ox-Bow Lagoon. Ox-Bow encouraged a gay presence in Saugatuck and Douglas, which flourished as gay-friendly small towns." (taken from the Saugatuck Douglas Area LGBT Guide 2010)

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