Jo-Lo Island Park

by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library

From a 1920s roadside fruit stand to a picnic park and baseball field, a meeting hall, a nightclub, a horse racing facility, and eventually a postwar airfield, “Jo-Lo Island Park” was Kalamazoo’s place to be.

Born in Illinois in 1876, Joseph H. Lowe owned the Kalamazoo Construction Company and maintained a large fruit farm along U.S. 12 between Comstock and Galesburg. When automobile travel became popular during the late 1920s, Joe set up a fruit and barbecue stand in his front yard to attract passing motorists.

The rear of Lowe’s property bordered the Kalamazoo River near Rowe’s Island, a 60-acre wooded isle that once featured an ancient garden bed and a large Indian mound. The island, commonly understood to be a former Native American ritual site, made an ideal picnic spot, which Lowe made accessible by a small ferry. During the late 1920s, Dr. Caroline Bartlett Crane spearheaded efforts to designate Rowe’s Island as a Michigan state park. Joe Lowe called it “Jo-Lo Island Park.”

The state park designation never came to be, but JoLo Park hosted numerous political rallies and social gatherings during the 1930s. Civil War veterans, fraternal organizations, county commissions, and religious groups gathered for picnics and meeting on Lowe’s riverfront acreage. After a gravel roadway was built to the island, summertime dances became popular.

As the park grew in popularity, Lowe built a pavilion and dancehall on the island, as well as a concrete tennis court and a baseball field along the river’s edge.

During the mid-1930s, “Old Time” dances with Charlie Fischer’s Globetrotters and “Hot and Sweet” music from the likes of Chuck Kruizenga’s Band drew even larger crowds.

When the sale of beer became legal in 1933, Lowe applied for a license to sell beer at his establishment. The dancehall was enlarged, and a restaurant was added. Chicken and steak dinners, beer, floor shows, and dancing until the wee morning hours kept the park busy. “Dance and drink beer” became the order of the day until 1937, when it was announced that construction of Morrow Dam would flood much of Rowe’s Island and bring an end to Joe Lowe’s picnic area and dancehall.

In response, Lowe put up a new 3,300 square foot “beerless” dancehall and restaurant near the highway and called it “Castle Hall.” He also built a new half-mile horse track and brought harness and saddle racing back to Kalamazoo for the first time in nearly a decade. The new dancehall remained popular, and the horse races at Jo-Lo Park often attracted thousands.

After Joseph Lowe’s death in 1944, the Castle Hall nightclub was closed. In 1946, Roger Parrott and Frederick Mills, both veteran Kalamazoo pilots, signed a five-year lease and turned the 80-acre parcel into a twin-runway landing field and clubhouse called the Aviation Country Club. The airfield served as an instruction center for pilots until after the war, but Mills and Parrott did not renew the lease, and dissolved their partnership in 1952. The former Castle Hall clubhouse saw use as a rental and auction hall until 1963 when fire destroyed the building.

Today, Rowe’s Island lies mostly submerged just beyond the Morrow Pond Boat Access. Rosemont Street now runs south from M-96 where Jo-Lo Park Road used to be. Otherwise, little evidence of Jo-Lo Park remains.

More at kpl.gov