The Fourth of July 1909: the pageant, the hotel, and the lights

July 4, 1909 · the river, Main Street, and the Hotel Mishawaka

The occasion: The greatest made day in Mishawaka's record was staged for a building and a switch. The impetus, in the commissioned history's account, came from the completion of the Hotel Mishawaka at the southeast corner of Third and Main Streets, but the Historical Pageant and Fourth of July Celebration was built as a homecoming too, encouraging the return of former residents who had moved away. The city's commissioned history calls it, in its chapter's plain framing, the city's most exciting day ever — and then enumerates a day that supports the billing.

The day: Ten thousand people began the day by watching a solemn Indian canoe procession come down the river, with Frederick Eberhart — the city's leading industrialist — playing Chief Elkhart and Jennie Skelly playing Princess Mishawaka. The delegation met city officials at the Cedar Street Bridge and joined a massive parade of 106 floats and several bands, seen by more than twenty thousand spectators. At noon, Princess Mishawaka, Chief Elkhart, and their entourage came to the front steps of the Hotel Mishawaka, and the princess raised the city flag next to the American flag, officially opening the hotel. Through the afternoon thousands of people explored the hotel, and almost six hundred had lunch or dinner in it. The day culminated at 8 p.m. on the hotel's veranda, where a crowd of five thousand jammed Main and nearby streets; following Mayor Charles Frank's remarks, Princess Mishawaka turned a switch that lit Mishawaka's first electric streetlights, illuminating streets on both sides of the river. The crowd roared its approval, and a band played "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The event and its meaning: As an event the day is complete in the record: its crowds are counted (ten thousand at the river, twenty thousand at the parade, five thousand at the switch), its program runs hour by hour, and its double purpose — a hotel opening and a lighting system's first night, folded into the national birthday — is stated by its makers. What the day meant is Culture's argument and stands there: that to celebrate its most modern hour the city dressed a young woman as a character from a thirty-four-year-old storybook — Littlejohn's Princess Mishawaka, a fiction the Story of Mishawaka section tests whole — and let her turn the lights on. The legend's record is the Story of Mishawaka section's; the princess's civic career is Culture's; the day itself, as the largest single gathering of the city's first century, is this entry's.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the day whole: the homecoming purpose, the canoe procession and its ten thousand, the 106 floats and twenty thousand, the noon flag-raising opening the hotel, the six hundred dinners, the 8 p.m. switch before five thousand, Mayor Frank presiding, and "The Star-Spangled Banner."
2. Culture section of this history — the day as the opening of the princess's civic career, and the casting's meaning.
3. Spine section of this history — the Princess Mishawaka tale tested against the record: Littlejohn's 1875 fiction, no document of the village's time.