Paper towns: how Otsego and Plainwell made America's pages

The stretch of the Kalamazoo River through Otsego and Plainwell was once one of the hardest-working waterways in the Midwest. From the late 1800s onward, paper mills lined the banks — Otsego alone supported several, and the area’s mills turned out everything from book paper to specialty stock that shipped nationwide. Generations of families in Otsego, Plainwell, and the surrounding townships built solid middle-class lives on mill wages, and the towns’ handsome downtowns and old neighborhoods are the legacy of that long boom.

The mills wound down around the turn of this century, and the towns have been deliberate about what comes next. Plainwell turned its mill into a city hall; Otsego has reclaimed riverfront for parks and events, and the river itself — long abused by industry — has been the focus of years of restoration work that has it cleaner than it has been in living memory. The paper era explains a lot about why these towns feel substantial beyond their size: they were built to last by people who made things, and that bone structure is still here.