Kalamazoo’s Westnedge Park Built Atop Pioneer Cemetery With Hundreds Buried Below

Did you know that this ordinary park in Kalamazoo is actually an early pioneer cemetery that contains hundreds of bodies to this day?

It was only a few years ago, when Kalamazoo was doing construction, that human remains were uncovered near West Avenue and Park Place in Westnedge Park.

The historic human remains construction workers dug up were estimated to be at least 200 years old or ceremonially reburied; however, estimates suggest that between 200 and 500 remains remain, unexcavated and buried, beneath the park and surrounding areas.

The land was originally established as a pioneer cemetery in 1833 and lasted all the way through the 1880s, in what is considered to be Kalamazoo's first established cemetery.

Eventually, when they wanted to establish it as a park, many families lacked the funds or even had living descendants to be contacted in order to properly relocate their loved ones' remains.

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Jump forward to August 2024, and the construction crews uncovered the buried gravestone belonging to 29-year-old Jonas F. Ash, a gravestone dating back to 1838.

The truth is that there are easily hundreds of bodies that will never be discovered in the area, and there’s no possible way that they could ever be exhumed unless the city really wanted to tear things apart to find them.

But at this time, a project like that seems unreasonable, and it makes more sense to let the park continue to strive, well also paying tribute to the cities origins. Who would’ve ever known that this innocent small park resting in the heart of Kalamazoo is actually a nearly 200-year-old graveyard?