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1830s–2020s
The numbers above become a history when they are set on the ground they counted: the first wave was settlement itself — the Harris Prairie taking of 1830 and the farm filling that carried Harris to its 437 by 1850 and Clay to its 659 (the entries, the prairie, and the first families are Before the City's whole, and the Land leg carries the soil and water the farms were laid on). The second fact of the ground is how long nothing happened next: for seventy years the two townships' combined population moved within a few hundred of two thousand, while the growth of the county ran to South Bend and Mishawaka instead. The subdivisions that ended the stillness belong to the Story of Granger section's narrative and the Businesses leg's anchors — the postwar plats along the township lines, the retail that followed them north — and this section's part is only to date the waves by the counts: the break comes in Clay's 1920s (the institutional west end), turns general in the 1950s (Clay +76 percent in the decade, Harris +52), and crests in Harris in the 1980s and 1990s (+119 percent, then +72 percent by decade), which is when the CDP line itself was drawn around an already-built suburb.
The schoolhouse count is the wave's pressure gauge, at pointer strength: the Ball State Teachers College cooperative study of the new Penn-Harris-Madison corporation (November 25, 1963, with its April 22, 1964 follow-on — read whole in the Schools section) counted its district at 6,506 people in 1930 and 18,188 at the 1960 census, with 4,300 children enrolled in 1959 — the demographic fact under the building wave the Schools section documents school by school: Mary Frank Elementary rising in Harris Township in 1958, the one-room districts retiring around it, and the five in-CDP schools of 1989–1998 following the rooftops north and east. Enrollment pressure itself — the counts of children by school and year — is the Schools section's record, and this section does not re-carry it.
The last wave is measured in brick: the survey record's decade-built table for the place's housing (American Community Survey 2020–2024, Table B25034) prints the building history as a stock: 114 units standing from before 1940; 575 from the 1950s; 882 from the 1960s; 2,036 from the 1970s; 2,687 from the 1980s; 2,697 from the 1990s; 1,524 from the 2000s; 183 from the 2010s; and 79 built in 2020 or later. Two-thirds of everything standing was built in the three decades 1970–1999, and 262 units — 2.4 percent of the stock — date from 2010 or after. The plateau of the closing article is not an impression; it is this table, read against the four counts.
Sources:
- The decennial township and CDP counts as sourced in the articles above (growth rates computed from the printed counts).
- American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates, Table B25034 (year structure built), Granger CDP — the Bureau's table as served through Census Reporter.
- The Story of Granger section and Businesses legs of this build (subdivision and commercial anchors), cross-referenced at pointer size.