Scotts is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Kalamazoo County in the U.S. state of

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. The community is located on the boundary between Climax Township and Pavilion Township.

Demographics

2020 census

As of the 2020 United States census, the area had a population of 187 people. The racial makeup was 47.8%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 33.0%

Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

, 0% Asian, 0% Native American, and 19.2% from two or more races.

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

or Latino people of any race were 0% of the population.

History

Land at Scotts was first deeded to Dan Wheeler in 1835. Samuel Scott settled here in 1847 and the community became known as Scotts Crossing, later shortened to Scotts. A post office named Scotts opened on February 19, 1872, with Servetus Bathrick as its first postmaster. The community was

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...

ted by Bathrick in 1874. On May 2, 2015, a 4.2

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

earthquake struck

West Michigan West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for a region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Generally, it refers to the Grand Rapids- Muskegon-Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region along the Lower Peninsula's Lake ...

, with the epicenter less than one mile NW of Scotts. The quake was felt from Wisconsin to southern Ontario, and revealed a previously unknown

fault line In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

stretching from

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 73,598. It is the principal city of the Kalamazoo–Portage metropolitan are ...

to Coldwater.

Present

Scotts is situated on the boundary between

Climax Climax may refer to: Language arts * Climax (narrative), the point of highest tension in a narrative work * Climax (rhetoric), a figure of speech that lists items in order of importance Biology * Climax community, a biological community th ...

and

Pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings; * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

townships along the

Grand Trunk Western Railroad The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company was an American subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, later of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971, the railroad ha ...

line at , approximately southeast of

. Scotts has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

with ZIP code 49088, which serves large portions of Climax, Pavilion, and northwest Wakeshma Township, and westward to Indian Lake and Long Lake in the city of

Portage Portage or portaging ( CA: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a '' ...

. The center of Scotts has several businesses, including a cafe, ice cream shop, general store, and salon, as well as a township fire station. The community was home to its own K-12 school district called Scotts School until 1946, when it consolidated with the nearby school district in

to form Climax-Scotts Community Schools. Facilities are split between the two communities. Climax-Scotts Elementary School (K-5) is located in Scotts on the former site of Scotts High School. Climax-Scotts Jr./Sr. High School (7-12), administrative offices, bussing, and athletic facilities are located 7 miles NE in Climax. In 2006, the original school bell for Scotts School was recovered and restored, and is now on display outside the Scotts Community Center.

References

Census-designated places in Michigan Census-designated places in Kalamazoo County, Michigan Unincorporated communities in Kalamazoo County, Michigan Populated places established in 1874 Unincorporated communities in Michigan 1874 establishments in Michigan {{KalamazooCountyMI-geo-stub