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Buchanan grew on McCoy's Creek, which drops about sixty feet on its way to the St. Joseph River and once turned more than a dozen mills. Charles Cowles settled there and built a sawmill in 1833, and the mill man John Hamilton platted the village in 1842. The Michigan Central Railroad came through in 1849, and the village was incorporated in 1858. In 1904 the town talked a Chicago firm into moving here; renamed Clark Equipment in 1916, it made axles and forklift trucks and kept Buchanan at work for decades.

At a glance

Founded

first settled by Charles Cowles, 1833; township organized 1837; village platted by John Hamilton, 1842; incorporated as a village, 1858

Name

for James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, later the fifteenth president; Ellis's 1880 history says simply, "The town derived its name from James Buchanan" — the township, organized in 1837, and the village after it

Mills

about thirteen water mills stood on McCoy's Creek in the 1800s; Pears Mill, built as a flour mill in 1857–58, is the only one left

A fire

in 1862 fire leveled much of the downtown; merchants rebuilt in brick, and the three-story Union Block, with its upstairs hall, went up in 1863

Industry

the George R. Rich Manufacturing Company came from Chicago in 1904–05 with about thirty men; as Clark Equipment it employed nearly 1,300 by 1929 and became a Fortune 500 company

County seat

no; the county seat of Berrien County is St. Joseph

Worth a visit

Eat and stay

• Thistledown & Row, 103 Days Ave., Buchanan, MI 49107. Modern American food with house-made ciders, meads and Michigan wines in a restored brick building downtown. It occupies the Redden Building, which brothers Samuel and Levi Redden built in 1884 and which then stood empty for years. The building was restored after 2020, and the restaurant opened on January 1, 2025.

More places to eat and stay in the valley ›

Where the records are

The Buchanan District Library, 128 E. Front St., has scanned and put online almost every issue of the Berrien County Record and Buchanan Record it holds, more than 5,800 issues from 1868 to 1998, with smaller runs of the town's other papers. Berrien County's older vital records are kept by the County Records Department at 2100 E. Empire Ave., Benton Township: births and deaths from 1867, marriages from 1831. The History Center at Courthouse Square, 313 N. Cass St., Berrien Springs, keeps a research library for the county. Ellis's 1880 History of Berrien and Van Buren Counties covers the village under Buchanan Township.

Sources

• Franklin Ellis and Crisfield Johnson, History of Berrien and Van Buren Counties, Michigan (Philadelphia: D. W. Ensign, 1880): first township meeting near the mouth of McCoy's Creek, April 3, 1837, and "The town derived its name from James Buchanan"; "The village of Buchanan was incorporated in 1858" (page 206) link
• Michigan History Center, historical marker "Buchanan Downtown" (L2276), 2015 (Cowles; more than fifteen mills on McCoy's Creek; Bainton's mill 1857–58, later Pears Mill; Union Block 1863; 1862 fire; George R. Rich Manufacturing Co., 1904; Clark Equipment 1916) link
• Wikipedia, "Buchanan North and West Neighborhoods Historic District" (Cowles 1833; Hamilton plat 1842; railroad 1849; village 1858; Clark workforce to 1929) link
• Wikipedia, "Buchanan Downtown Historic District" link
• City of Buchanan, "Pears Mill" (built 1857; Buchanan Preservation Society; hours; 60-foot fall of McCoy Creek; 13 mills) link
• Buchanan District Library, "Historical Newspaper Collection" (128 East Front Street; digitized Record 1868–1998) link
• Wikipedia, "National Register of Historic Places listings in Berrien County, Michigan" link
• Berrien County, "Genealogy" (County Records Department) link

Dates and names are from the county histories and official sources listed here. Where they disagree, we say so. Know better? Send a correction.

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