Twin Branch: the neighborhood that took the power plant's name

1900 – PRESENT

The name ran downhill — creek, dam, plant, neighborhood: Twin Branch Creek comes down to the St. Joseph River just above the dam at the city's east side. The dam on the river there was first called the Hen Island Dam; the modern dam was built by Sanderson & Porter for the St. Joseph and Elkhart Power Company, commissioned 26 February 1900, and its powerhouse sent out its first power on 16 December 1903 — the oldest hydroelectric plant in the American Electric Power fleet's lineage, still generating, its course whole in the businesses file of this record. A steam station rose on the north bank, in service by 1927, and worked until June 1978, when it shut with its coal railroad. The neighborhood east of the dam took the plant's name outright: Twin Branch.

No company-built housing, no company town plat, no I&M subdivision stands in any source read for this section. What stands is a neighborhood that grew east of the Twin Branch works and took their name — the same relation the Ball Band and Dodge neighborhoods bear to their plants, read whole in the mill-neighborhoods entry below. The plant-town claim is printed here at the strength the record gives it, no stronger.

The annexation date is a genuine conflict, and it is printed whole: Twin Branch School's own history page records that its land was purchased in 1919 for a two-room Penn Township school, with an addition in 1920 — and that "in 1927 the city annexed eastward and bought Twin Branch," the school passing to the city with the ground; the present building at 3810 Lincolnway East is dated 1952. De Kever's account, carried in the government file, likewise puts the Twin Branch annexation in 1927. The Story of Mishawaka section file of this record phrases the Twin Branch country as "in by 1919–20" — conflating, on the face of the school's record, the school's township founding with the city's annexation. This section follows 1927, on the school's own history and De Kever against the Story of Mishawaka section's phrasing, and the correction is owed to the Story of Mishawaka section's wording at assembly. The neighborhood's parish is Queen of Peace — "The Twin Branch Parish" in the religion file's style — established by Bishop Pursley in 1957, its first Masses said in Twin Branch School: church and school exchanging buildings' uses in the way of new neighborhoods. The neighborhood's civic weight in the city's story is fixed by one more anchor: Margaret "Maggie" Prickett, who owned a supermarket in Twin Branch, ran for mayor in 1963 and won — the city's first woman mayor, serving 1964–1980. Twin Branch by then was not a plant's fringe but a constituency.

Sources

1. Businesses file of this record — the Twin Branch dam and plant course: the Hen Island Dam name, Sanderson & Porter, commissioning 26 February 1900, first power 16 December 1903, the steam station 1927–June 1978; National Inventory of Dams IN03011.
2. Twin Branch Elementary School, the school's own history page, as carried in the schools file of this record — land purchased 1919, the two-room township school, the 1927 annexation and purchase, the present building of 1952, 3810 Lincolnway East.
3. Religion file of this record — Queen of Peace, established 1957, first Masses in Twin Branch School.
4. Spine file of this record — the "in by 1919–20" phrasing, printed here as the conflict it is.
5. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (city-commissioned) — Margaret Prickett's Twin Branch supermarket and the 1963 election.