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1913–1926 · tested name by name for the Lakeville segment
One map settles the era for this corridor. The 1925 Rand McNally Junior Auto Trails Map of Indiana marks the South Bend–Rochester reach of this road with all three of its designations together: State Road 1 (a circled 1), the Dixie Highway (number 25 in a dark square), and the Michigan Road (number 26 in a dark square) — primary cartographic evidence, at reproduction strength, that in the last full year before the numbers era the road through Lakeville was simultaneously a state road, a named trail and a named historic road. The Dixie Highway's whole course on this ground: the Dixie Highway Association was organised and incorporated on 3 April 1915 at Chattanooga, and its directors designated the route system on 22 May 1915 — a ladder of two and sometimes three parallel north–south roads, its routings controlled by the governors of the states involved (the Historical Bureau's marker annotation, ID# 71.2010.1, standing at Michigan and Washington Streets in South Bend where the Lincoln and Dixie highways intersect). Michigan's agreement, within a week, built a loop around the Lower Peninsula passing via South Bend, Mackinaw City, Detroit and Toledo; Detroit became the northern end of the Eastern Division, and "the old route to Indianapolis becoming a connecting link" — in the system's own vocabulary, the South Bend–Indianapolis road was the Dixie's Indianapolis connecting link, carried on the Michigan Road. Through Lakeville expressly, at segment-exact strength: a northern section of the later US 31, "from Rochester to South Bend… originally served as part of the Dixie Highway," and Lakeville lies inside Rochester–South Bend; the corridor surveyor's county work treats "the Dixie Highway in Lakeville and La Paz, Indiana" as its subject throughout. At Indianapolis the link entered "along the path of the historic Michigan Road," so the Dixie's link ran Michigan Road end to end over this ground. The years on this ground run from the 1915 routing to the number era's absorption — SR 1 signs in 1919, US 31 shields on 1 October 1926 — after which, the surveyor notes, "the old names eventually fell into disuse"; locally the name survived in speech ("Dad always called the road Dixieway, despite the US 31 shields every few blocks") and survives still as a street name at Roseland and South Bend. No Dixie marker, shield or pole-marking in Lakeville itself was documented by any carrier reached (gap G-RD-9); the 1925 map concurrency is the present best evidence, and the build prints the distinction.
The Michigan Road's own trail life runs beside the Dixie's: its Rand McNally trail number 26 on the same 1925 map; an organised Michigan Road Association — one hundred members appealing to Governor McCray and the state highway commission on 20 June 1921 for the road's full inclusion in the state system, the South Bend Tribune reporting the road "still left out of the state system" as a whole road even while its St. Joseph County ground was in the system from 1917 (the next article's refinement); and the modern designation: the Historic Michigan Road Byway, designated by INDOT in 2011 on the Bicentennial Commission's legacy programme, 270 miles generally following "Old US 31 to South Bend" on this reach — through Lakeville, therefore, today's SR 931 and Michigan Street — signed with "Michigan Road Historic Byway 1829" markers by the Historic Michigan Road Association; whether byway signs stand in Lakeville itself was not documented (gap G-RD-10; the corridor-level statement "the entire route, minus the portion through South Bend, is signed" is the carrier's, and the town-level fact wants a field check).
The negatives, each on its own evidence. Lincoln Highway — negative for the Lakeville segment: its original Indiana route "passed through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte, and Valparaiso" (the Bureau's marker annotation) — the northern tier, east–west; inside South Bend it shares ground with the Michigan Road only on the road's west leg out of the city (Lincolnway West), some eleven miles north of Lakeville; its 1928 relocation to US 30 crosses the Michigan Road at Plymouth, a boundary point south of town. Yellowstone Trail — negative: the 1922 trail list runs it "by way of Gary, Valparaiso, Plymouth, Warsaw, Pierceton, Columbia City, Fort Wayne" — an east–west stairstep south of Lakeville whose only Michigan Road contact is at Plymouth (primary-list strength). National Old Trails Road — negative: it followed the National Road, becoming US 40 and Main Market Road 3 — some ninety miles south (the federal highway-history carrier). Hoosier Highway — negative: the 1922 list runs it Detroit to Memphis "by way of Fort Wayne, Bluffton, Huntington, Muncie, Anderson, Martinsville, Spencer, Worthington, Washington, Petersburg, Oakland City, Princeton and Evansville" — a diagonal sixty miles east at its nearest; and the separate Hoosier Dixie Highway (Goshen–Warsaw–Wabash–Marion–Anderson–Cincinnati) is likewise negative, printed here so the index never conflates the two. Dixie Bee Line — negative: it "separated from its namesake at Danville, Illinois… roughly due south through Terre Haute, Vincennes and Evansville," a hundred miles west. Jackson Highway — negative for Lakeville: on this later US 31 corridor it ran "from Indianapolis to Seymour" only; north of Indianapolis the road was Range Line Road, Michigan Road and Dixie — never Jackson.
Principal sources: Indiana Historical Bureau, "Lincoln & Dixie Highways" marker file, ID# 71.2010.1 (official); the 1925 Rand McNally Junior Auto Trails Map of Indiana as reproduced in Grey, Finding the original US 31 in northern Indiana (primary cartography at reproduction strength); the Lafayette Journal and Courier auto-trail list, 1 November 1922, verbatim via Indiana Transportation History (primary list); Indiana Bicentennial Commission legacy-project page (official, the Byway).