The standing facts

November 2026

The frame: Mishawaka stands in November 2026 as a separately incorporated city of St. Joseph County, Indiana, lying wholly on Penn Township ground, its western line touching South Bend's eastern line — two cities, one county, and one metropolitan statistical area, the South Bend–Mishawaka, IN–MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which the federal definitions draw as exactly two counties, St. Joseph in Indiana and Cass in Michigan. The boundaries, the annexation course that assembled them, and the area figures in their three published vintages — 17.348 square miles in the Census Bureau's 2010 gazetteer, 17.87 in the city's commissioned history, 18.25 in the 2020 gazetteer — stand in the Story of Mishawaka section of this history, printed there with their vintages unreconciled, and are pointed to here rather than re-measured: the limits still move by ordinance, as the annexation hearing of 2026 in the government record shows.

The count, at portrait size: The 2020 census counted 51,063 people — the most the city has ever held — and the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate puts the city at 51,226 on 1 July 2025, an estimate and not a count, computed from a Bureau working base of 51,102. The series in full, its conflicts, and the township control stand in the Population section; the line to carry here is the shape of it: Mishawaka has grown in every census but one since 1850, and the city of November 2026 is the largest Mishawaka there has been.

The government, by pointer: The present government — Mayor Dave Wood, in office since 7 September 2010; the nine-member Common Council as seated through 2026; City Clerk Deborah S. Block; City Hall at 100 Lincolnway West — stands verified in the Story of Mishawaka section's "government today" article and the Government section of this history, and is not re-dug here. What this section adds to it is only the calendar: those offices all stand for election again on 2 November 2027, as the closing entries record.

The institutions, by pointer: The city's standing institutions closed their own present states in their own sections, and this portrait points rather than re-closes: the School City of Mishawaka and the Penn-Harris-Madison schools in session for 2026–27 (Schools); Bethel University (Schools); the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library system (Libraries); Saint Joseph Mishawaka Medical Center and the Franciscan Mishawaka hospital (Hospitals); the city's own utilities — water, sewer and electric — under the Mishawaka Utilities name (Government and Businesses). Where November 2026 has added a dated fact to one of them — a school under construction, a hospital building announced — it stands in the building entries below, at project size.

Sources:

1. The Story of Mishawaka section of this history — the boundaries and annexation entries (the three area vintages printed unreconciled; the 1838 act fixing the town in Penn Township) and the "government today" article (verified November 2026).
2. The Population section of this history — the 2020 count of 51,063; the Vintage 2025 estimate of 51,226 at 1 July 2025 and its estimates base of 51,102 (U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts, Mishawaka city, Indiana).
3. The Government, Schools, Libraries, Hospitals and Businesses sections of this history — the institutions' present states, pointed to and not retold.