The fall at the rapids: two feet, nine inches

THE INDUSTRIAL PREMISE

The factory city starts as a measured slope in a river: Timothy Edward Howard's county history of 1907 does the arithmetic the whole city stands on. "The actual fall of the river for a few rods at the rapids," he writes, "has been found to be two feet and nine inches." The natural rapids at Mishawaka were not a cataract; they were a riffle — fast, shallow water over broken rock, good for a ford and a fishery and, unaided, for almost no machinery at all. What made the place a power site was concentration: a dam thrown across the river just above the rapids gathered the river's whole flow behind one head and let it out through races — level canals dug along each bank — from which a mill at any lot could draw its fall. The iron works' proprietors built the first dam and the first bridge, both by private means, as Howard records, and the state marker at the site gives the dam's measure: completed in 1837, 577 feet long, 24 feet thick, built at a cost of $38,000, at the foot of what is now Race Street. "A mill race was dug on each side of the river," Howard writes, "and early use was made of the unequaled water power at the rapids." The plats show the system's paper twin, and the distinction matters: the north-bank plat of Indiana City reserved a vacant tract between Joseph Street and the river, marked "Reserved for water power," with a mill race drawn from the rapids along the north side down to the island — and, Howard notes in the same passage, that race "was never dug along the plat of Indiana City, and consequently the vacant tract was never used 'for water power.'" The races that were dug made the drawn town real; the one that was not dug stayed a line on a plat. The marker's summary of what the dug races drove is the system's first product list, and it is printed as the marker gives it: along the races the early factories "produced flour, lumber, woolen goods, iron, boots, shoes, furniture, coffins, barrel staves, saddles and harness, and wagons, valued at many hundreds of thousands of dollars each year." No horsepower figure for the races' system — no letting book, no schedule of wheels and inches of water — was reached first-hand; the records of the Mishawaka Hydraulic Company, the power company the dam's course produced, are the named settling source, and the gap is printed rather than filled. What the record does give is the fall, the dam, the races, and the judgment Howard built on them: that the town's very name, for the big rapids, was a recognition of "the fine water power that could be secured" — and that the ore is gone while the power, in his word, "remains a perennial boon."

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (Lewis Publishing, 1907), Chapter X, "The City of Mishawaka" — the actual fall at the rapids of two feet and nine inches; the first dam and first bridge built by private means; a mill race dug on each side of the river; and the Indiana City plat's tract "Reserved for water power," whose race was never dug.
2. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1968.1, "First Dam Across the St. Joseph River / Power Race" — the dam completed in 1837, 577 feet long, 24 feet thick, $38,000; and the race-side industries' product list with the marker's own valuation, "many hundreds of thousands of dollars each year."
3. Ward Baker, "Mishawaka on the Eve of Conflict," Indiana Magazine of History — the dam and races account rests in part on the "Synopsis of the History of the Mishawaka Dam and the Mishawaka Hydraulic Company," prepared from the Hydraulic Company's records, named here as the settling source for the power system's internal record.
4. This build's Spine section — the dam's place in the founding sequence, cross-referenced and not retold.