The Connections: One River, Three Systems

The Riverwalk does not end at Logan Street; only the loop does. At its western end the trail joins South Bend's Northside Trail, and through it the East Bank Trail and the whole of the neighboring city's river system — the connection printed at directory strength by TrailLink and at roster strength by the system's own partnership. That partnership is the Indiana–Michigan River Valley Trail partnership, a standing body of six members — the cities of South Bend, Mishawaka, and Niles, St. Joseph County, Berrien County, and the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission — and its system, the IN–MI River Valley Trail, is the modern network's regional frame: on the Friends of Berrien County Trails' statement, the trail "currently connects Michiana communities with 24 miles of multi-use trail, running from the Mishawaka Riverwalk to an endpoint around Plym Park and the YMCA in Niles," with the partnership's own page giving the system's present length as 25 miles. The two figures print together, attributed, one mile apart and unreconciled. Mishawaka's place in the frame is exact: the Riverwalk is the system's southern terminus and its only Indiana loop; the line runs north from Logan Street through South Bend to Niles, Michigan, and the partnership's standing plans describe resurfacing, realignment, and extension work on the segments between — at planning strength, in the segments' own files.

East is the gap. From Cedar Street the river runs on to Osceola and Elkhart without a trail, and the closing of that gap is the system's one live project of record. In 2024 the Michiana Area Council of Governments took up a planning project for a Mishawaka-to-Elkhart Trail: an eleven-mile gap in what the announcement calls the Crossway Trails network, whose closing would join the Mishawaka Riverwalk to the Elkhart Riverwalk in an uninterrupted multi-use line of approximately 58 miles. The project's federal support is a Department of Transportation RAISE planning award; the Greenways Foundation's release of the award carries $816K in its headline and $186,800 in its text for that award, and the two figures are not reconciled in the release — both print here as printed. The planning scope, at announcement strength, runs to public engagement, alternatives analysis, a preferred alignment, up to thirty percent design on priority segments, and an implementation and funding strategy. North and south, the system has no connections of record: no trail of any era documented leaves the river corridor from Mishawaka ground, and the modern system's one axis is the river it walks.