Twin Branch: the community a power plant named

1919 – PRESENT

The name is older than the plant, and the community outlasted it: the ground at the city's east end was "referred to on all records as the Twin Branches" from the early 1800s, for the two rivers converging near it, on the school's own history — a place-name waiting for a community. The community arrived in layers. Penn Township bought land in 1919 and built a two-room school at 3810 Lincolnway East; the Indiana & Michigan Electric Company's great generating station rose on the river beside it, with its own railroad — the Twin Branch Railroad, organized in 1927 to haul coal to the plant, under two miles long; and in 1927 the city annexed the tract and bought the school, making Twin Branch Mishawaka's. The neighborhood that took the power plant's name is the neighborhoods file's entry; what belongs here is its course as a company community without company houses: the plant was the employer and the landmark, the school and, from 1957, Queen of Peace parish — founded for the eastward growth, its first Masses said in Twin Branch School's gymnasium, and still called the Twin Branch parish in the religion file — were its institutions, and the houses were the ordinary subdivisions of the city's east side gathering around all three. The plant's own chronicler is the city's: Peter De Kever's Lost Mishawaka carries the chapter "When Mishawaka Was the Power City: The Story of the Twin Branch Dam and Power Plant," and the power identity it names is the culture file's other name for the city itself.

The ending is dated and the afterlife is open. The generating station shut down in June 1978 and the Twin Branch Railroad was abandoned with it; the dam and hydro plant on the river remain Indiana Michigan Power's, and in November 2026 the company was taking public comment on the future of its St. Joseph River hydroelectric facilities, Twin Branch among them, at an open house in Mishawaka on 12 November — the current file carries the proceeding. The community the plant named kept the name after the plant closed: the school stands, the parish stands, and Twin Branch remains the east end's name for itself, a company community that became simply a neighborhood — the plant's name naturalized as the place's.

Sources

1. History of Twin Branch Elementary School (School City of Mishawaka, twinbranch.mishawakaschools.com) — the name's early-1800s record, the 1919 land purchase and two-room school at 3810 Lincolnway East, the Penn Township years, and the 1927 annexation and purchase.
2. Twin Branch Railroad (Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society) — the railroad organized 1927, coal haulage to the Indiana and Michigan Power generating station, and the June 1978 abandonment on the station's closing.
3. Religion file of this record — Queen of Peace established 1957, the Twin Branch parish, first Masses in the school gymnasium.
4. Round the Bend Now and Then podcast, "The Story of Mishawaka's Twin Branch Dam and Power Plant" — De Kever's Lost Mishawaka chapter and the Power City identity.
5. Indiana Michigan Power hydroelectric-facilities public process, November 2026 (the Twin Branch open house of 12 November 2026) — as carried in the current file of this record.