Mishawaka Business and Industry History

Mishawaka, Indiana · topic

Mishawaka Business and Industry History

Ball Band, AM General and the mill town: firms, owners, founders, inventions and fortunes.

Business & Industry

§ 09Mishawaka Business History: The Rest of the Economy, WholeMishawaka is usually told as two companies, and both of them hold their own files in this build: Ball Band, the woolen mill that became the red-ball rubber works, and AM General, the Humvee builder on McKinley Highway.…39 entry pages § 11Ball Band in Mishawaka: The Woolen Mill That Put a Red Ball on America's FeetFor a hundred and thirty years the largest fact in Mishawaka was a factory on the river. A small wooden woolen mill stood by the dam from about 1838, four years after the town was founded; in 1867 Jacob Beiger and his…16 entry pages § 12AM General in Mishawaka: The Humvee Works on McKinley HighwayAM General is Mishawaka's defining industrial fact. The company that builds the Humvee — and now the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle that succeeds it — has run its assembly plants on the city's east side, along McKinley…29 entry pages § 10Mishawaka Business Owners: A Historical DirectoryThis is a list, not a narrative: one line for each business owner the record reached, with the business they owned — 1,221 owner-and-business lines in all. It is drawn from the city directories at ten sampled points…§ 31Mishawaka Founders and Chief Executives: The People Who Started and Ran Its CompaniesMishawaka's business history is usually told as a history of firms — the woolen mill, the pulley works, the brewery, the Humvee plant. This section tells it as a history of people, and of one recurring shape: in this…18 entry pages § 14Mishawaka's Industrial Revolution: Iron, Wool, Rubber, and the Truck PlantMishawaka's industry did not begin with a factory either. It began with a fall of water too small to look at — two feet and nine inches, as the county history measured it — and with a swamp that rusted. What the town…21 entry pages § 15Mishawaka Inventors and Inventions: The Patent RecordMishawaka's inventive record is smaller than its twin city's, and this section prints it at its true size rather than inflating it to a match. What the record holds is nevertheless remarkable for a city of its scale…30 entry pages § 17Mishawaka Technology: Wires, Light, and the City's Own FiberMishawaka's technology record is not a smaller copy of its twin city's, and this section does not print it as one. South Bend's record runs through laboratories and a university; Mishawaka's runs through adoption — the…10 entry pages § 16Mishawaka and the Dot-Com Era: Mishawaka on the WebAsked plainly — did anybody from Mishawaka win the dot-com era? — the record answers yes, once, at real size, and then mostly in the negative, and both halves of that answer are this section's substance. Mishawaka's…15 entry pages § 18Farms and Crops of Mishawaka and St. Joseph County: The Mill Town's Farm GroundMishawaka was a mill town from its first plat, but the town was planted in a farming township, fed by farms, and ground its flour from farm wheat. The agricultural record of the place is therefore two records at once…§ 19Tractors in Mishawaka and St. Joseph County: The Maker Test and the Dealer RecordMishawaka made a great many things — transmissions of power, rubber boots, windmills, steel plows — and the question this section answers is narrower than the city's industrial record: did it ever make a tractor , and…§ 20What Mishawaka Sold to the World: A History of Its ExportsMishawaka has no port, no customs house and no export ledger of its own, and for a century and a half its goods went everywhere anyway. They went the way manufactured goods from an inland mill town go: by rail to other…11 entry pages § 32Mishawaka's Great Fortunes: Fortunes Made, Kept, and Given AwayMishawaka's money has a different shape from its neighbor's. South Bend's record holds a wagon fortune and a plow fortune that can be priced from estate litigation and front-page sales; Mishawaka's fortunes were mostly…16 entry pages § 91Lottery and Crypto in MishawakaMishawaka has played the state's game since the first Hoosier Lottery scratch-off tickets were sold on October 13, 1989 — and Mishawaka holds a place in that game most Indiana cities do not: one of the Lottery's three…14 entry pages § 94Mishawaka Dealerships: From the Harness Shops to the Auto RowsNo Mishawaka maker stands in the brass-era sellers’ record — though the city did build cars, the Simplex and Amplex of 1906–1915, as the Automobiles record prints whole — and for its first two decades of motoring it…16 entry pages

Cite this page

Using this page? Copy a credit line. Last updated November 12, 2026.

Source: Mishawaka Business and Industry History, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/mishawaka/topics/business-industry/

@misc{moosed-business-industry,
  title        = {{Mishawaka Business and Industry History}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/mishawaka/topics/business-industry/}},
  organization = {Project Moosed},
  note         = {Moosed History. Last updated 2026-11-12. Accessed 2026-11-12},
  year         = {2026}
}