Kamm Island

THE BREWERY'S ISLAND

The river keeps one island inside the city, and getting the public onto it took a lawsuit: Kamm Island lies in the St. Joseph River at the Kamm & Schellinger brewery ground — the brewery whose course is Business and Industry's — its stack overlooking, in the visitor record's phrase, "the St. Joseph River, Kamm Island, Lincoln Park, and Kate's Garden." The island's nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century course is not established in the sources. Its modern course is a Riverwalk fight: the city's south-bank walk was planned, in the Tribune's 2002 account, to run "across the channel to Kamm Island, down the length of the island and back across the channel at the east end of the island," on three footbridges. The bridges were litigated before they were built: in 2002 a judge refused to block the city's Kamm Island bridge plan — the court noting, in the Tribune's report, that none of the plaintiffs was opposed to developing Kamm Island as a city park — and in 2004 the Schellinger Square condominium owners sued over the western bridge, a steel span 140 feet long and twelve feet wide set before their homes, contending it infringed their riparian rights; the city, by its attorney John H. Lloyd IV, answered that it did not. The bridges stand: the island is a park on the Riverwalk today, benches and grass and a rest stop mid-river, reached from Lincoln Park at its west end and from the Beutter side at its east.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the three footbridges to Kamm Island in the south-bank Riverwalk's course.
2. South Bend Tribune, 2002 — the planned island crossing in full; the judge's refusal to block the bridge plan and the court's note on the plaintiffs.
3. South Bend Tribune, 2004 — the condominium owners' suit over the 140-foot western bridge and the riparian-rights claim; the city's answer by its attorney.
4. Visitor record (November 2026) — the brewery stack's prospect over the island; the island as a Riverwalk rest stop today.