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Weird Facts · the strange-but-documented record
Every city accumulates a drawer of facts that sound invented. This section is Mishawaka's drawer, opened and checked. Each entry below is a genuine oddity of the record — a townsite bought from the school fund for eight hundred dollars, a "big rapids" two feet and nine inches high, a Navy tug that ended its days seized in a Dutch harbor, a library that moved house by book cart — and each carries the source it stands on. Where an oddity is told in full elsewhere in this history, the entry here is short and points to its home section. Where a famous local oddity does not survive checking, it is entered anyway, as a claim, with the failure stated — that, too, is part of the record. Nothing in this section rests on an unsourced "did you know."
The name that will not settle
THE WORD ITSELF · THREE READINGS, NO RULING
The readings: Mishawaka's name is a Potawatomi place-name, and the record hands down its meaning in three forms that do not reconcile. De Kever carries the word as M'Shehwahkeek, rendered "swift flowing water" or "heavy timbered…
Four paper towns, gathered into one name
1833–1838 · THE RIVAL PLATS
The crowd of towns: Before Mishawaka was one town it was at least four, each a separate plat filed at the recorder's office with its own proprietor, surveyor and name. Alanson Hurd's village of 1833 was St. Joseph Iron Works.…
The townsite the schoolchildren owned
1 JANUARY 1833 · BOUGHT ON THE SETTLERS' OWN PETITION
The purchase: The ground Mishawaka stands on was never the federal government's to sell. In every congressional township the rectangular survey reserved one section — Section 16 — for the support of schools, and Mishawaka's…
"Big Rapids": two feet and nine inches
MEASURED 1907 · THE FALL THE CITY IS NAMED FOR
The measure: On Howard's reading of the name (above), Mishawaka means Big Rapids. Howard's own history also does the arithmetic, and the arithmetic is the oddity: "The actual fall of the river for a few rods at the rapids," he…
The dam whose first electricity lit another city
16 DECEMBER 1903 · TWIN BRANCH
The reversal: When bulk power came to the valley it came from a dam on Mishawaka's own river, at Twin Branch, east of the city — and its first electricity, on 16 December 1903, lit not Mishawaka but Elkhart. The sequence stands…
The frontier of steam, and the "world's first" that rode on it
1940–1949 · TWIN BRANCH'S HIGH-PRESSURE DECADE
The frontier: For one decade the steam plant at Twin Branch was a place where the country's power engineers were pushing a genuine frontier, and — unlike most local firsts — this one is documented in the profession's own journal…
The date inside the stair
26 APRIL 1889 · 415 LINCOLNWAY EAST
The proof: The red-brick Queen Anne at 415 Lincolnway East is believed built in 1889, and the belief is proven from inside the fabric of the house itself. The ordinary documentary trail had been destroyed: the city and county had…
The library that moved by book cart
1872–1969 · AND THE MOTTO OVER ITS DOOR
The wanderings: Mishawaka's library began, on the surviving record, with a fire: the earliest-known collection, the Maclure library, was destroyed by fire in 1872, the year of the town's Great Fire. What followed was a generation…
The brewery that outlived Prohibition on soda pop
1918–1933 · KAMM & SCHELLINGER'S DRY YEARS
The survival: Indiana went dry in 1918, ahead of the nation, and Mishawaka's brewery simply changed what came out of the kettles. The beer brands run to 1918 in the brewery-trade record; from 1918 to 1933 the house at West 2nd…
The factory paper that claimed twice the town
THE DODGE WORKS' OWN MONTHLY · CLAIM PRINTED AT CLAIM SIZE
The claim: Mishawaka's strangest circulation figure belongs not to a newspaper but to a factory. The Newspapers section, reading the trade listings whole, sets the figures side by side on one page: the Dodge Publishing Company …
The newspaper with three birthdays
1853 · 1854 · 1855 · THE ENTERPRISE'S FOUNDING
The conflict: Mishawaka's permanent paper cannot say what year it was born, and the record gives it three birthdays, each with its own carrier. The county histories say 1853: Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907) both begin the Free…
The bronze that gets it wrong
1932 · THE TABLET AT LINCOLN PARK
The tablet: Before any state marker stood in this city, Mishawaka marked its own founding — in bronze, and out of a novel. The monument of 1932: a statue on a native boulder provided by the Mishawaka Chapter of the Daughters of…
The coldest number, reached twice
25 JANUARY 1897 · 20 JANUARY 1943 · THE VALLEY'S WEATHER OF RECORD
The numbers: Mishawaka keeps no weather book of its own; the valley's record is the South Bend station's, kept since 1893, and its strangest entry is a tie that has stood for more than eighty years. The National Weather Service's…
The Mishawaka that went to sea
1963–2010 · YTB-764, A HARBOR TUG
The ship: For thirty-nine years the United States Navy had a Mishawaka, and she never came within a thousand miles of the river she was named for. The Mishawaka (YTB-764) was a Natick-class large harbor tug — 109 feet, 356 tons…
The first death at the Indianapolis 500 was in a Mishawaka car
30 MAY 1911 · THE FIRST 500
The car: Mishawaka built automobiles for fifteen years, and its machines ran in the first Indianapolis 500. Two cars of the American Simplex — built here by the Simplex Motor Car Company, whose cars later took the name Amplex …
Thirty-five hours of futsal, and the word that never came
10–11 APRIL 2011 · GATES GYMNASIUM, BETHEL COLLEGE
The attempt: On Sunday, 10 April 2011, at noon, the Bethel College men's soccer team began playing futsal — indoor soccer on a basketball-sized court — in the Gates Gymnasium on the college's Mishawaka campus, and did not stop…
The alligator that was a turtle
1999 · BERRIEN COUNTY, MICHIGAN · THE TEST
The test: Every river city keeps an alligator story, and the Local Animals section was sent to test Mishawaka's class of them against the record. The record's answer is a turtle, in Michigan, in 1999. The searches ran across the…
The record fish that are not here
THE STATE LIST, READ WHOLE · 1966–2024
The list: The Local Animals section documents that in 1972 the state's whole-river survey found its richest water at Mishawaka — the highest game-fish count and the highest total catch of its fifty-two stations at the Mishawaka…
The night the sky broke — and the meteorite that isn't
26 NOVEMBER 1919 · THE TEST
The event: Shortly before eight o'clock on the evening of 26 November 1919, a brilliant meteor crossed far northern Indiana and southern Michigan, seen by dozens of witnesses across both states, its shock wave felt as…
The state road that exists because the county said no, twice
APRIL 1998 · NOVEMBER 2004 · STATE ROAD 933
The refusal: Mishawaka's main street is a palimpsest — one pavement that has been, in succession, Second Street, the Lincoln Highway from 1913, Main Market Route 2, State Road 2 and US 33 — and its present number exists only…
The mayor no election chose
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2010 · THE SUCCESSION
The handover: Mishawaka's modern mayoral succession was settled, once, by no election at all. Jeff Rea, mayor from the start of 2004, resigned the office in August 2010 — not at an election, not in scandal, but to head the St.…
The county's animal shelter was Mishawaka's all along
INCORPORATED 1886 · 2506 GRAPE ROAD
The premise, corrected: The institution the whole county assumes is South Bend's stands in Mishawaka, and has for a hundred and forty years. The Humane Society of St. Joseph County — the county's humane society, incorporated in…
Told often, checked in the ledger
THE CLAIMS THIS SECTION DOES NOT RETELL AS FACTS
Mishawaka's most-repeated oddities are worked in full — telling, teller and record side by side — in the sections that own them, and are entered here, each with its verdict, so this drawer is complete. That the city was named for…