Springbrook and Playland: the trolley park across the line

SOUTH BEND'S GROUND, MISHAWAKA'S CHILDHOOD · 1880 TO 1961 · BOUNDARY PRINTED

The park Mishawaka children actually used stood in South Bend, and this entry prints the boundary as it does so: the ground, the company, and the closing were South Bend's; the children on the cars were, in their documented thousands, the region's — Mishawaka's among them, on the same streetcar and interurban lines this history's transit record maps through both cities.

The ground began in 1880 as Springbrook Park, a trolley park on the St. Joseph River at the east side of South Bend, in the Ironwood and Lincolnway East country — close enough to Mishawaka that De Kever's history, recording a 1920 football game, places Springbrook Park "just west of the city limits," meaning Mishawaka's. By 1912 the park carried the full trolley-park plant: a casino, an exhibition hall, and a roller coaster; a race track followed in 1916. In 1924, under manager Pete Redden, a public contest gave it the name it kept: Playland. It closed in 1961, and its ground passed to a quieter family use of the same century — a lighted par-three golf course.

Mishawaka's documented presence at the region's pleasure grounds is of the excursion kind, and its best-dated instance belongs to the zoo record of this history, which prints it whole: in June 1920, Mishawaka High School held its first annual picnic at South Bend's Potawatomi Park, some four hundred pupils carried there by special streetcars. The instance is worth its place here because it shows the mechanism entire — a Mishawaka childhood's big day out was organized by the school, moved by the streetcar company, and landed on a South Bend ground. The 1920 football game at Springbrook Park, Mishawaka against South Bend High, documents the same crossing on the playing side; the game itself belongs to the sports record. No Mishawaka ground ever answered Playland in kind, and when Playland closed in 1961 the region's children lost the trolley park altogether — the automobile-age grounds that replaced it in Mishawaka's own record are the pool complex, the rink, and the Putt-Putt of the entries that follow.

Sources:

1. The published history of Playland Park, South Bend — the 1880 Springbrook Park beginning, the 1912 plant (casino, exhibition hall, coaster), the 1916 race track, the 1924 renaming contest under Pete Redden, the 1961 closing, and the ground's later use as a lighted par-three golf course.
2. South Bend News-Times, 9 June 1920 — the Mishawaka High School picnic at Potawatomi Park, some 400 pupils by special streetcars; carried whole in the zoo record of this history.
3. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — Springbrook Park "just west of the city limits" and the 1920 game; the game carried in the sports record.