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() is a city in and the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States, Indiana's 13th largest city. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard and Tipton counties.
Kokomo was named after a Miami Indian referred to as a chief, but later found to be local legend Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo, which is sometimes spelled as Koh-Koh-Mah or Kokomoko.His name translates to Black Walnut.There was a trading post for commerce between Native Americans and European-Americans here in the early 19th century. David Foster founded the first trading post in Howard County. In 1844, Foster donated of his land to create a county seat in Kokomo, which was a log courthouse, for use in the community. It was incorporated as a city in 1865.{
Kokomo is officially known as the "City of Firsts" for, among other achievements, being a pioneer of United States automobile manufacturing, with Elwood Haynes test-driving his early internal combustion engine auto there on July 4, 1894. Haynes and his associates built a number of other autos over the next few years; the Haynes-Apperson Automobile Company for mass-production of commercial autos was established in Kokomo in 1898. Haynes went on to invent Stainless Steel flatware in 1912 to give his wife tarnish-free dinnerware. In 1938, the Delco Radio Division of General Motors (now Delphi) developed the first push button car radio.
On October 6, 1886, natural gas was discovered in Kokomo, leading to a "boom" in business. This discovery was directly responsible for Elwood Haynes' move to Kokomo, as he was a superintendent with a gas company with interests in Kokomo and Howard County. The Diamond Plate Glass Company began in Kokomo in 1887, lured by the cheap and plentiful natural gas. This company later became part of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, or PPG.
A more reluctant notoriety of Kokomo was the involvement of local citizens in the Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan. There had been large numbers of followers for years, which culminated on July 4, 1923, with the largest gathering of Ku Klux Klan members in history, which assembled at Malfalfa Park in Kokomo for a mighty Konklave. Attendance is estimated to have been 200,000 people.
Kokomo serves as the "City of Firsts" in the food industry as well. In 1928 Walter Kemp, Kemp Brothers Canning Co. developed the first canned tomato juice because of a request by a physician in search for baby food for his clinic. Kokomo is also home to the first mechanical corn picker which was developed by a man named John Powell in the early 1920s. In modern times, Kokomo was home to the first Ponderosa Steakhouse Kokomo opened the first McDonald's with a diner inside, locally called "McDiner." This McDonald's theme failed nationally.Eventually, the "McDiner" closed and was converted back to a regular McDonald's restaurant. Kokomo also opened the first Cracker Barrel not built near an interstate highwayas well as the first Starbucks Coffee not built in a metropolitan area.
Much of the town was damaged or destroyed on April 11, 1965, by an F4 tornado that was part of the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak.
Ryan White was a teenager from Kokomo who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS after being expelled from school because of his infection.