The crossings

1837 — 1913

A two-bank town lives or dies by its bridges: The first bridge crossed in the dam's year, 1837 — built by popular subscription for $2,499, west of the dam, joining the furnace town to the north-bank plats while the union act was still a year away. Ice damaged the first bridge, and in 1847 the town replaced it with a 300-foot red covered bridge, which carried the crossing until 1874; an iron bridge followed. The crossings multiplied as the city grew along the river: the Logan Street Bridge, built in wood in 1902, closed in 1908, partially collapsed in 1911, and replaced in concrete in 1913; the Cedar Street Bridge, opened in 1904 — the bridge the Princess pageant's canoes came down to in 1909; and a concrete Main Street Bridge, completed in 1908, on the line of the town's first north–south street. Upriver, the power crossings kept pace with the street crossings: between July 1901 and October 1903 the St. Joseph & Elkhart Power Company built the Twin Branch dam east of the city — 400 feet long on a 21-foot fall — and on December 16, 1903, its current lit Elkhart ("Mishawaka Electricity Lights Elkhart," the papers said); the plant passed to the Indiana & Michigan Electric Company in 1907 and the dam took the name Twin Branch. The bridges and dams are the Story of Mishawaka section's furniture because they are the town's skeleton: every era of Mishawaka is measured by what it built across, or into, its river.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker text — the first bridge of 1837 at $2,499 by popular subscription.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the red covered bridge of 1847–1874 and the iron bridge after it; the Logan Street Bridge's course (1902–1913); the Cedar Street Bridge (1904); the concrete Main Street Bridge (1908); the Twin Branch dam's construction, dimensions and first electricity (December 16, 1903).