The counters Lakeville used, era by era

1913 – NOVEMBER 2026 · SOUTH BEND ~11 MI, WALKERTON WEST, PLYMOUTH SOUTH

The town's licensing geography had four points of the compass and never a centre. From 1913 into the early 1920s: the mail, and the notary channel (above). From the early 1920s through 1929: the department's county-seat counters at South Bend. Through the patronage era, 1929–1988: the county organisation's counters — South Bend, and Walkerton once Walkerton's branch was seated (its seating date is gapped in Walkerton's own running and is not filled from here). Through the commission era, 1988–2021: the same three counters — South Bend, Mishawaka, and Walkerton in its last documented form, part-time, Tuesday and Thursday only. From 2021 to November 2026: Walkerton's staffed seat has ended (its whole is Walkerton's; a reduced agency and kiosk presence persists there at directory strength, and the Bureau's own wait-times system still names Walkerton among a neighbour branch's nearby branches), and Lakeville's full-service counters are South Bend's Ireland Road branch and Mishawaka's, with Plymouth's branch south across the county line standing verified beside them. The distances print labelled by kind, never merged: South Bend — the town stands "about eleven miles south of South Bend" (the banked spine, town-to-town), and the branch itself, on the city's south side, measures 7.4 miles straight-line from the town's banked Gazetteer point to the branch's place-record coordinates (computed); Mishawaka — 11.4 miles straight-line on the same computed basis; Walkerton — 11.6 miles straight-line computed to its town point, its road distance via SR 4 standing as an unverified framing figure of about thirteen miles until a routing carrier is read (the distance residue, named in the closing article); Plymouth — 12.2 miles straight-line computed to the branch's coordinates, against town-to-town figures of about ten to eleven in school-directory returns and a weak commercial carrier's fourteen road miles — three kinds, printed as three. A Lakeville resident's branch was always a drive; each era only answered which drive, and to whose counter.