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1862–1921 · THE FIRE-PROTECTION SIDE OF THE WATER
The cistern in the street, 1862: A hand engine is only as good as its water, and Mishawaka's first public water for firefighting was a hole in the ground: in 1862 the town placed a 400-barrel cistern in the middle of the intersection of Main Street and Lincolnway, to be drafted from where the business district needed it most. The cistern is the volunteer era's whole water system in one artifact — stored water, at one point, in the town's center.
The water works, 1873–74 and 1890: The great fire of 1872 — carried whole in the next entry — exposed the cistern system for what it was, and the town's answer came the following two years: a private water works was built in 1873–74, giving the engines pressurized water to draft and, in time, hydrants to couple to; the works were improved in 1890. The municipal utility that grew from this beginning — the city as its own water and power company — is Government's subject whole; what belongs here is the fire-protection thread only: cistern, then works, then improvement, each step bought by a fire.
The bell, 1880: In 1880 a new hose house was built and fitted with a 300-pound fire bell — the town's alarm before wires: the bell's strokes told the volunteers, and the town, that there was a fire and, by the era's convention, roughly where. A second hose house followed in 1892, as the town spread on both banks of the river.
The alarm boxes, 1921: By the directory of 1921 the alarm had become a printed system: the Polk directory carries a table of fire-alarm boxes across the city — the street-box telegraph network from which a pulled box summoned the paid department to a numbered corner. The box list is the paid era's dispatch record at its documented size; the department's later radio and telephone dispatch course is not separately documented in the record reached, and stands as a named gap rather than a reconstructed one.
Sources:
- National Park Service, National Register registration form, Mishawaka Fire Station No. 4, Section 8 — the 400-barrel cistern placed 1862 at Main Street and Lincolnway; the private water works built 1873–74 and improved 1890; the 1880 hose house and its 300-pound fire bell; the second hose house of 1892.
- R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory (1921), as carried in the Government fragment of this build — the printed table of fire-alarm boxes across the city.