The dam of 1837 and the races

1837 AND AFTER

The dam was the town's second founding, and the state marker at its site still gives its measure: "The original dam, providing power for which Mishawaka was noted, was completed in 1837. It was 577 feet long, 24 feet thick and cost $38,000.00." So reads the Indiana Historical Bureau marker at Race and First Streets (marker 71.1968.1), set where the south race left the river. The dam stood at the foot of Race Street, thrown across the river at the head of the rapids, and the marker's second face tells what it was for: "Along this race, providing water power, and along its counterpart across the river, early Mishawaka factories were located. These industries 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." Howard's county history puts the digging plainly: "A mill race was dug on each side of the river." The water-power system behind the races was the Mishawaka Hydraulic Company's — Ward Baker's study of the town on the eve of the Civil War rests in part on a synopsis of the dam and the company prepared from the Hydraulic Company's own records, then kept in the U.S. Rubber engineer's office, together with the South Bend Free Press of 14 October 1837: the record of the dam was a working company's record from the start.

One race was projected and never dug. Howard records of the Indiana City plat on the north bank that the mill race laid out along it "was never dug," and that the tract the plat reserved high over the river, marked for water power, was instead "presented by Mr. Battell to the city of Mishawaka, to be used as a public park" — the reserved power ground becoming Battell Park, whose course is carried below. The races that were dug had long afterlives as ground: the north race's line ran where the Rubber Regenerating Company built in 1908–09, its great plant — in De Kever's words — sitting "astride the old north mill race," on the ground that is now Central Park. The dam itself was rebuilt and raised across the years on its original ground, as the Story of Mishawaka section states, and the structure at Central Park's north end today is the same work in its successor form: the Indiana DNR's fish-ladder marker at the site names it "the historic Mishawaka overflow Dam." Who owns the downtown dam today is not named in the sources; the Twin Branch hydroelectric dam three miles upriver is a separate, later structure, and its course — built 1901–1903, first power 16 December 1903 — belongs to Business and Industry.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1968.1, "First Dam Across the St. Joseph River / Power Race" — the dam's completion, dimensions and cost; the industries along the two races.
2. Timothy E. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907) — a mill race dug on each side of the river; the Indiana City race never dug; the reserved tract given for a park.
3. Ward Baker, "Mishawaka on the Eve of Conflict," Indiana Magazine of History — the Hydraulic Company synopsis and the Free Press of 14 October 1837 behind the dam's record.
4. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the Rubber Regenerating plant astride the old north mill race.
5. Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Mishawaka Fish Ladder marker (erected 2013) — the present dam named the Mishawaka overflow Dam.