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August 1910 — the reversal
The reach and the refusal: In August 1910 the council annexed River Park, northwest of the river and Logan Street — the same northwestward reach the Great Annexation had made along the city's west side. Indiana law permitted the annexation but gave the territory's citizens the right to remonstrate, and River Park's exercised it: the annexation was ultimately reversed, and River Park in time became part of South Bend instead.
Why it stands in this section: River Park is the standing proof in Mishawaka's record that annexation was a contest with rules, not a formality — the city could reach, and the reached-for could refuse, and the refusal could win. Five years after the farmers west of Logan lost in the Supreme Court, the householders northwest of the river won with a petition. The two outcomes together are the honest shape of Indiana annexation law in the city's formative decade: the same statute produced both, depending on who signed what, and when. The neighborhood's later course is South Bend's record; the refusal is Mishawaka's.
Sources:
- Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the River Park annexation of August 1910 and its reversal on remonstrance, as carried in the government record, Government.