Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Mattawan, MI

Mattawan is a village in Antwerp Township, Van Buren County, Michigan, just west of Kalamazoo and part of the Kalamazoo–Portage metropolitan area.

According to a 1912 history of Van Buren County, the village was named after Matteawan, New York, on the Hudson River — railroad attorney Nathaniel Chesebro bought 40 acres here while the Michigan Central Railway was under construction and laid out the town.

In 1848, Charles Scott donated land for Mattawan's railroad depot, and the surrounding Antwerp and Porter townships grew into grape country, with some 15,000 acres of vineyards whose fruit was marketed in villages including Mattawan.

Mattawan had 2,550 residents in the 2020 census, living in 1,034 households.

The village's population jumped 27.7% between 2010 and 2020, rebounding from a dip to 1,997 residents in 2010.

It is a young village — the median age was 36.0 years in 2020, and 25.7% of residents were under 18.

Mattawan is home to Mattawan Consolidated School, founded in 1910 and considered Michigan's oldest consolidated school district, created when merging rural one-room schoolhouses into a single district was still unusual.

The district pointedly avoids the word 'district' in its name and uses the singular 'school' — a naming practice that dates to its 1910 founding.

Unusually, all of the district's schools — Early Elementary, Later Elementary, the Middle School and Mattawan High School — share a single unified campus at 56720 Murray Street, serving about 3,800 students from parts of Van Buren and Kalamazoo Counties.

Mattawan High School's current building opened in 1990; its predecessor, built in 1959, now serves as the Early Childhood Center.