Mishawaka, Indiana · 20th century
1970s
31 dated events in 1970s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 31 dated mentions
1970s
- 1970The five-story front, 1970
The last building on the old ground: On the southwest edge of downtown, in the urban-renewal years that were clearing blocks around it, St. Joseph Hospital opened a new five-story wing in 1970, with what the commissioned history calls an attractive façade and an east-facing main entrance.
- 1970–2024The counts: 107 in 1970, and the growth the modern censuses show
The 1970 count, read first-hand in the census volume's own tables: the Seventeenth Census's Indiana volume, in both its race-by-sex table for places and its age table, counts Mishawaka city at 35,517 people, of whom 35,312 were white and 107 were Negro — 57 male and 50 female , three-tenths of one percent of the city.
- 1970–todayThe apartment era: 1970 downtown, and the riverfront return
The first apartment building in the record stands on a mansion's lot: two blocks east of the renewed downtown core, the Mix Mansion — the Dodge president's house — was razed in 1968 to make way for the 114-unit 500 Lincoln Way East Apartments, which opened in 1970 for low-income seniors.
- 1971AM General's chiefs — a South Bend seat, a Mishawaka works
The company's founder, in the corporate sense, was a parent: American Motors took over the defense and government-products business on 31 March 1971, and the Detroit Free Press announcement of 2 April 1971 named the new AM General Corporation's directors…
- 19721972: The Survey That Found This Water Richest
In the summer of 1972 the Michigan Department of Natural Resources surveyed the whole St. Joseph River, headwaters to mouth, at minimum flow — fifty-two mainstem stations, forty-four in Michigan and eight in Indiana, every one of them electrofished, thirty-six netted as well…
- 1973October 1973: the great wave passes the county by
The state record: Blue Book had been closed four years when the largest sighting wave of the 1970s crossed the country in the fall of 1973, and Indiana's documented share of it is dated precisely: on 9 October 1973, by the Mutual UFO Network of Indiana's account as the Stacker state survey carries it, first-responder…
- 1973–1976Marian football — the Hecklinski titles: three championships in four years
The titles: Marian won the first IHSAA playoff championship it could have — the Class A title of 1973, in the tournament's first year, beating Providence 21–14 under coach Mike Hecklinski, the team 10–2.
- 1973–2008Marian volleyball — a title in the tournament's second year, and four finals under Dan Anderson
The title: In 1973–74, in the second IHSAA girls volleyball championship ever played, single-class Marian beat Fort Wayne Snider 15-10, 15-4 to finish 18–0 under coach Sidney Dunphy.
- 1973–2022The Register Roll — eleven listings, no Landmark, one removal, one over the line
What the city holds is the Register itself, at Register size: eleven listings standing inside the city — the Beiger House (1973), the Dodge House (1978), the Kamm and Schellinger Brewery (1979), the Eller-Hosford House (1983), the Merrifield-Cass House (1983), the Ellis-Schindler House (1990), the Battell Park…
- 1973–2026The Eveleth test: the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame's inductees — and Indiana's one name
The search: The United States Hockey Hall of Fame at Eveleth, Minnesota, has enshrined its members since 1973, individuals and five teams (the 1960, 1980 and 1998 Olympic teams, the 1996 World Cup team and the 2002 Paralympic sled team).
- 1973–2026The National Register, the Surveys and Who Filed Them
In the order they were listed: the Beiger House (28 August 1973), the Dodge House (8 September 1978), the Kamm and Schellinger Brewery (11 October 1979), the Eller-Hosford House (27 January 1983), the Merrifield-Cass House (16 June 1983), the Ellis-Schindler House (18 December 1990), the Battell Park Historic District…
- 1974The Mishawaka building before the Humvee
It got one in 1974, when AM General's diversification into transit buses put assembly in the underused plant — and the building's conversion then, and again a decade later, is the reason reference works that describe AM General "building" a Mishawaka factory in 1984 are telling only the last third of the building's story.
- 1974"The largest single order for buses ever placed" — AM General's 620
When AM General of Mishawaka entered the transit-bus business in 1974, its first great order came from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority: 620 Metropolitan buses.
- 1974The database era: Mishawaka in the National UFO Reporting Center
The system now: Since 1974 the national record of sightings has been kept not by the Air Force but by the National UFO Reporting Center, founded that year by Robert J. Gribble…
- 1974–1979The bus years: the Metropolitan
Diesel Metropolitan production ran 1974–1978. The Flyer 700/800/900 series account totals 5,212 diesel Metropolitans sold 1974–1979, and 219 trolleybuses — electric coaches for Seattle Metro and Philadelphia's SEPTA — built in 1979, for the reference total of 5,431 buses including the 219 trolleybuses.
- 1974–2012The finals ledger — two trips, two defeats, no playoff title
1974: In the second year of the IHSAA playoff tournament, Mishawaka reached the Class 3A final and lost to Indianapolis Washington 19–12.
- 1975Kyle Bornheimer: the quarterback who went to the Groundlings
The tie, exactly: Kyle Edward Bornheimer was born September 10, 1975, in Mishawaka, and raised here — a full-strength tie.
- 1976Doc Pierce's: the downtown steakhouse with a borrowed name
The house's account: Doc Pierce's Restaurant stands at 120 North Main Street, at the corner of Lincolnway East and Main in downtown Mishawaka, and its own account is the record's spine for it: "Locally owned since 1976."
- 1976–2023The city's own shelf: Mishawaka writing Mishawaka
Janice Bridges, Indiana's Princess City: The History of Mishawaka, 1832–1932 (1976), is the first book-length history of the city by one of its own, and for a generation it was the shelf.
- 1976–todayThe school libraries, at the record's true size
Mishawaka High School's library was renewed as one named item in the school's four-year modernization of 1976–1980 — "the auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium, library, administrative offices, industrial education wing, hallways, classrooms and stadium"…
- 1977The dealer pattern, tested: Gurley Leep took the lot online and stayed
The Gurley Leep Automotive Family — the family-owned dealer group founded by Mike Leep Sr. and Van Gurley, whose own history begins with a Buick store in South Bend in 1977 and whose relationship with Mishawaka dates to 1984, when the company partnered with the city on the Grape Road corridor…
- 1977Gurley Leep: the 1977 house that made Grape Road its home
The founding: The Gurley Leep group was founded in 1977 — on 7 October, by the arithmetic of the South Bend Tribune's account of its fiftieth-anniversary year — with a Buick franchise in downtown South Bend, by Mike Leep Sr. and Van Gurley.
- 1978The Blizzard of '78
The storm: The Great Blizzard of January 1978 — January 25 to 27, the worst blizzard on record for Indiana — is Mishawaka's largest winter event, and its record is the twin cities' shared record, stated as such.
- 1978Hacienda: the chain founded in a brewer's mansion
The founding, in the company's own sentence: The chain Mishawaka sent out into Indiana begins with a sentence its own history still leads with: "Hacienda Mexican Restaurants began with one location in 1978 in the historic mansion of a brewer in Mishawaka Indiana."
- 1979Baugo Creek and the Tributary Survey, 1979
In the spring and fall of 1979, Ginger Lee Marenchin and David M. Sever of the Department of Biology at Saint Mary's College seined and electrofished seven tributary streams across the two counties — 3,741 specimens, forty-one species plus hybrid shiners…
- 1979The Lampreys: Two Natives and an Invader
The natives first: the 1979 tributary survey collected lampreys in the drainage's small water — two specimens of an Ichthyomyzon brook lamprey at two localities, and the brook lamprey Lampetra lamottei at Turkey Creek, a species the Saint Mary's biologists flagged as a new record for the entire St. Joseph River drainage.
- 1979The opening and the anchor course, 1979–1980
Sears opened first, alone: on 1 March 1979 the Sears store at the mall's end opened for business ahead of the center it anchored — 196,000 square feet with a seventeen-bay auto center, the largest single store the mall would ever hold.
- 1979–1983The Humvee is designed
The requirement: In 1979 the Army set out to replace two aging light vehicles — the M151 jeep and the M561 Gama Goat — with a single high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle: a 1.25-ton truck family in several configurations, wide, low, and able to keep up with the new generation of armored vehicles.
- 1979–1985The Humvee: a claim tested — designed by AM General, built in Mishawaka
The AM General file of this history establishes the first half of the truth: the Humvee was genuinely the company's own design, the first vehicle AM General and its predecessors had designed themselves rather than building to another firm's drawings, with preliminary design work begun in July 1979 and the prototype contracts of July 1981.
- 1979–todayKovach, Beutter, Rea, and the caucus of 2010
Robert Kovach, 1980–1983: The Democrat Robert "Bob" Kovach won the election of 1979 and served one term — in the Story of Mishawaka section's summary, the only Democratic mayor of Mishawaka between Margaret Prickett's victory in 1963 and the present day.
- 1979–todayThe Grape Road fringe: the far north side becomes the city's second center
The fringe began with the mall and then acquired an office city: the commercial growth on Mishawaka's far north side began, in the commissioned history's sequence, with University Park Mall and University Center in 1979 and continued with Indian Ridge and Wilshire Plaza in the early 1980s — the mall course is the malls file's, whole.