First presences on the web, as the archive dates them

WAYBACK MACHINE CDX INDEX, QUERIED NOVEMBER 2026 · INDEX DATES, PRINTED AS SUCH

Method, stated once: Every date in this article is the first capture the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine CDX index returns for the domain named, queried directly for this section in November 2026. A first capture is a floor, not a launch date: a site existed by that date, and may have existed earlier unarchived. Capture contentsConflicts print whole.

The schools were first: The earliest dated institutional presence in Mishawaka is its school district's. The CDX index's first capture of www.mishawaka.k12.in.us, the School City of Mishawaka's domain, is 6 December 1998. (The district's later scm.mishawaka.k12.in.us subdomain enters the index in March 2013.) Three days earlier the index holds its first capture of mishawaka.com — 3 December 1998What is certain is the comparison that survives either answer: the city government's own settled domain, mishawaka.in.gov, does not enter the index until 9 September 2010, and no capture of the older ci.mishawaka.in.us form was returned by the index queries run. If mishawaka.com was city hall's, the city was early and let the record lapse; if it was not, the schools beat the city onto the web by twelve years. Both readings print; the archive decides between them when its pages can be read.

The firms and the college: The dealer group of the dealer-pattern article precedes the winner: gurleyleep.com enters the index 27 November 1999. The winner's own domain carries this section's sharpest conflict, printed whole: the index's first captures of betterworldbooks.com are dated 9 October 1999 — more than two years before the company's 2002 founding, in the same season its founders were building a teacher-evaluation application as students. The founders' legal name fares worse in the archive: qumpus.com returns no capture before 21 October 2016. Bethel's presence is cleanly dated under its own name of the era: bethelcollege.edu enters the index 23 September 2001; its successor domain, betheluniversity.edu, enters in May 2019, matching the university renaming era. One trap is printed so no later leg falls into it: bethel.edu, captured from 2 March 1997, is Bethel University of Minnesota — a different institution in St. Paul — and its 1997 date must never be quoted as Mishawaka's Bethel's, however inviting the four-year head start would be.

The library, and the order of arrival: The Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's mphpl.org enters the index 28 January 2006. Read as a table, Mishawaka arrived on the web in this order: a name-domain of unsettled ownership and its school district together in December 1998; its biggest dealer group in November 1999; the winner's domain — under whoever held it — in October 1999; its college in September 2001; its library in January 2006; and its city government, on its settled domain, in September 2010. The educational institutions led, commerce followed within a year, and city hall trailed the schools by more than a decade on the archive's dating. That ordering — schools and sellers first, government last — is the first-presences article's finding, and it matches the rest of this section at every point.

Sources:

1. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine CDX index, queried November 2026 for this section — first captures: mishawaka.com, 3 December 1998; www.mishawaka.k12.in.us, 6 December 1998; betterworldbooks.com, 9 October 1999; gurleyleep.com, 27 November 1999; www.bethelcollege.edu, 23 September 2001; www.mphpl.org, 28 January 2006; mishawaka.in.gov, 9 September 2010; scm.mishawaka.k12.in.us, 29 March 2013; qumpus.com, 21 October 2016; betheluniversity.edu, 10 May 2019; www.bethel.edu, 2 March 1997 (Bethel University, Minnesota — printed as the trap it is). No capture returned for ci.mishawaka.in.us or mphpl.lib.in.us in the queries run.