Michigan Post Office Murals Project

Paw Paw: The Location

The facade of the Paw Paw post office. Photo by Rosa Glaessner Novak.

In writing about the addition of underground strata of root systems, minerals, and fossils to panels below Bounty’s main scene, Lopez wrote about the people of Paw Paw as “people of the soil” (see Process). The soil that Lopez depicted in the mural is one that many people were bound to over time. In the 1830s, the Potowatomi of southern Michigan were being forcibly removed from their home. Amidst this violent dispossession of land, several Potawatomi communities maintained their place in the southwest corner of the state, with one of these communities living on the land that would soon be home to the town of Paw Paw. These communities later came together to form the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. In the mid-nineteenth century, individual members of the Potawatomi community at Paw Paw–in order to have a claim to soil and space–bought sections of the town’s land, which had been recently surveyed, divided, and assigned value. On that land, some grew corn, one of the most prominent fruits shown in Lopez’s work.

Paw Paw’s identity as an agricultural town, growing the corn, lettuces, wheat, apples, pears, plums, and grapes that Lopez painted in his mural, has continued through the present day. In the late 1800s, grape cultivation began in the Paw Paw area. In Lopez’s conversations with residents in 1939, grapes time and time again were suggested as the subject of the mural, and he made note in correspondence with the Section of the grape festival held in Paw Paw each year (see Process). The 1941 Federal Writers’ Project Guide description of the town, written just a year after Lopez completed his mural, likewise focuses on the area’s grapes and its grape festival, as well as the murals, like Lopez’s, painted in town:

“Paw Paw, seat of Van Buren County, is the center of an important vineyard area. A Grape Festival, known locally as Mardi Gras, is usually held here during the last week in September. The celebration takes place around Maple Lake, created in 1908 when the river waters were dammed for power use. Paw Paw took its name from the picturesque river, named by the Indians for the trees that grow in abundance along its banks.
Tragedy, a mural by Frank Van Ness, is in the lobby of the Van Buren County Courthouse on Paw Paw Street; and Carl Hoerman’s murals, lake shore views and scenes of agricultural life in the region, are in the hallway of the Paw Paw School, on Michigan Avenue, a training unit of Western State Teachers’ College.”
Lopez’s mural in the Paw Paw post office. Photographed by Rosa Glaessner Novak in May 2023.

Lopez’s mural can still be seen in its original location, at 125 North Kalamazoo Street in Paw Paw. Three stalks of wheat not unlike the geometric, abstracted stalks of Lopez’s painting adorn the concrete face of the post office’s entrance just above its front doors.

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