The numbered succession on Lincolnway: State Road 2, US 33, State Road 933

1917–PRESENT · ONE STREET, FIVE DESIGNATIONS

The Lincoln Highway's pavement took numbers the way it had taken names: In 1917 the young state highway system numbered the east–west road through Mishawaka Main Market Route 2 — a route the route record notes was also known as the Lincoln Highway. At the creation of the state road system the line became State Road 2, part of a road that ran from the Illinois state line through South Bend to Elkhart and on to the Ohio line. In the 1930s the number changed to a federal one. The year stands in three tellings and all three are printed: the State Road 933 route history dates the change of the SR 2 section to US 33 in 1935; the US 33 Indiana record dates US 33's first designation to 1937; and the national US 33 record dates the route's establishment to 1 January 1938, created in conjunction with the Blue and Gray Trail and dedicated in ceremonies on 2 May 1938. What is not in dispute is the course the number took through this city: from Elkhart, where it came up Main Street, US 33 ran west along Lincoln Way through Mishawaka and South Bend — the path of present State Road 933 — and then north with US 31 toward Michigan. The extensions and truncations of its northern end are the route record's: extended in November 1960 to a junction with I-196/US 31 near Lake Michigan Beach, north of St. Joseph; truncated in 1986 to the US 12 junction south of Niles; and truncated finally in April 1998 to US 20 at Elkhart.

The county that would not take the road: The 1998 truncation is Mishawaka's corridor story in miniature. When INDOT removed US 33 north of US 20, the old road was to come under local jurisdiction. Elkhart County's governments accepted theirs; St. Joseph County did not accept local control — and so the road the county refused became a state road again under a new number, State Road 933, in April 1998. The South Bend Tribune carried the change on 18 April 1998 under the headline "Portion of U.S. 33 is now Indiana 933: Name Changes Along Lincoln Way, North to State Line." In 2004 INDOT tried to eliminate SR 933 and hand the road over again; St. Joseph County again did not accept, and the designation remained — a second refusal, carried in the press record of November 2004, that kept Lincolnway a state highway by the county's own choice. The road as it stands in Mishawaka today is that state road: SR 933 follows Lincolnway through the city as a four-lane undivided road with a center turn lane, meets SR 331 at a traffic light east of downtown, and crosses Main Street — where its junction sign names the cross street Old SR 331, the palimpsest in one sign. INDOT's 2010 traffic counts put the peak volume on the whole of SR 933 not in South Bend but here: 25,040 vehicles a day, 2,610 of them commercial, on the section near Bittersweet Road in Mishawaka. The road's southern end, for the state system, is at Lincoln Way and Ash Road in Osceola, on the county line — the Baugo detour point of 1913, where the Lincoln Highway itself first turned onto this pavement.

Sources:

1. The Indiana route record for State Road 933 — Main Market Route 2 in 1917 and its identity with the Lincoln Highway; SR 2's replacement by US 33 in 1935 as that record dates it; the 1998 removal of US 33 north of US 20, Elkhart County's acceptance and St. Joseph County's refusal; the 2004 second attempt; SR 933's present Mishawaka course, its SR 331 light and Main Street ("Old SR 331") crossing; INDOT's 2010 counts at Bittersweet Road.
2. Wikipedia, "U.S. Route 33" and "U.S. Route 33 in Indiana" — the 1 January 1938 establishment and 2 May 1938 Blue and Gray Trail dedication, the 1937 first-designation dating, SR 2's Illinois-to-Ohio course, the November 1960 extension, the 1986 and April 1998 truncations.
3. AARoads, St. Joseph Valley Parkway guide — US 33's former course from Elkhart's Main Street west along Lincoln Way through Mishawaka and South Bend on the present SR 933 line, its original reach to St. Joseph, Michigan, and the 1998 truncation.
4. South Bend Tribune, 18 April 1998 — "Portion of U.S. 33 is now Indiana 933"; The Journal Gazette (Associated Press), 21 November 2004 — the handover opposed, the county's refusal standing.