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1851 – before the Civil War · the surface that remade the town, briefly
Howard read whole gives the plank road everything except its dates — so the dates come from the county at the road's other end. This pass ran the LK-1 settler first, and reports its result plainly: Howard's roads chapter contains exactly one plank sentence — "Plank roads were for a time resorted to on some lines, as on the Michigan road between South Bend and Plymouth; but these were all wisely abandoned and gravel roads substituted in their place" — and his town passage (the banked quote's full home) gives the effect and the end, undated: "When the Michigan road, from South Bend to Plymouth became a plank road, an infusion of new life for a time gave an air of prosperity to the little hamlet, and several additions were platted to the town; but after a few years the plank road became out of repair and the old planks were taken up and the toll houses removed." No company name, no year, no toll date appears in either passage; Howard is exhausted as a settler for dates, and remains the settler for the succession, the toll houses' existence (plural — no gate location in or near Lakeville is named by any carrier; gap G-RD-8), and the town effect — with the caution that the four addition proprietors Howard names at his passage's end (Henderson, Hupp, Ulery, Rush) are listed without dates and are not expressly tied to the plank years; the build does not date them by this passage.
The dates stand in the Marshall County record. The company's name is verbatim: the South Bend and Plymouth Plank Road Company. Its authorisation is the Plymouth Pilot's legislative report of 18 July 1851, preserved in McDonald's county history: "The bill relative to the South Bend and Plymouth Plank Road Company was read a third time and passed" — reached only as a search-index snippet of a copy on a host this build does not open, and labelled snippet strength for exactly that reason; the form of the item (a bill "relative to" an already-named company, passed and reported 18 July 1851) supports a company in being by July 1851, and the act's own text is the named settler for incorporation strength proper (gap G-RD-7 — with the general Indiana plank-road law of 15 January 1849, under which companies organised by articles filed with county recorders, standing as the alternative incorporation route; the settler must be the act or the articles, not an assumption). The construction is first-hand county history quoting the contemporary press. McDonald: "During the year 1851 the question of how to obtain good roads was the all-absorbing topic of conversation and discussion among the people of Marshall county," and the Pilot — then the county's only paper — reported the race to build: "Logansport is building to Rochester and has completed about fifteen miles. South Bend has built about ten miles toward us. La Porte has built about twelve miles toward us, and it remains with us whether it comes here or goes through North Liberty to South Bend." Ten miles south of South Bend reaches approximately the Lakeville ground — printed as correspondence: the built plank front stood at or near Lakeville in the 1851–52 season; no carrier reached states the plank's exact southern terminus that season. The Pilot's specification for the work prints because it is the road's material record: "Lay down your plank one foot wide, nine feet long, and full two and one-half inches thick, and it will stay there." The completion sentence carries an ambiguity the build prints rather than resolves: in McDonald's paragraph sequence, "The plank road was completed most of the way to Plymouth during the year 1852. It never paid the expense of construction, and after a few years was abandoned. The boards soon began to warp at the ends and as no repairs were made the road became almost impassable. The planks were finally taken up and piled at the side of the road and finally rotted or were burned up" follows a sentence about the La Porte road, but closes expressly on "the Michigan road to South Bend." Printed so: plank completed most of the way to Plymouth in 1852 (McDonald, the antecedent ambiguity noted); what is unambiguous in both histories is the end — McDonald: "Before the war all the plank roads that had been built were abandoned, and that great improvement scheme that promised so much in the beginning came to an inglorious end"; Howard, for this road: the planks taken up and the toll houses removed, and gravel substituted. G-SP-3 therefore closes at the strength stated: company named; authorisation 1851 (snippet, act-text settler named); construction 1851–52 at first-hand; failure in a few years; abandonment before the Civil War. One neighbouring company prints at boundary size so it is never merged with this one: the Logansport and Rochester Michigan Road Company, incorporated 15 January 1846 for a plank-or-macadam road on the Michigan Road's southern reach, planked about 1852 with two-inch boards twelve feet long, fair for a year or two, then abandoned — Cass and Fulton County ground, a different company and a different segment, corroborating only the era's pattern.
Principal sources: McDonald, History of Marshall County (1908), "Plank Roads," pp. 151–152, and the Plymouth Pilot items it quotes (first-hand); the company's bill item of 18 July 1851 (snippet, labelled); Howard (1907), Ch. VI §II §3 and the Lakeville town section, pp. 314–315 (first-hand); Gordon, IMH (the 1846 company, boundary).