The Dated Mileage Ledger, Figure by Figure

A ledger may print only figures with dates, and the record holds fewer than the system's fame suggests. The dated figures are these. December 2017: the South Bend Regional Chamber's downtown account describes "that 3-mile pedestrian loop" — the Riverwalk as a three-mile loop, the figure of record for the completed downtown course of Beutter, Kamm Island, Battell, Central and Lincoln parks. 5 October 2023: the east extension's dedication completed the Logan-to-Cedar course; the builder's statement prices the work at $4 million but the record gives the extension's added length in no figure, and no new official total for the whole system was published with it in the record reached. November 2026: the city's parks page presents the whole course in the present tense, ground by ground, without a single system mileage. The ledger therefore stands at one dated figure and one dated completion: three miles in 2017, a completed Logan-to-Cedar course in 2023, and the year-by-year figures between and after — the openings of 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2015 each changed the total, and no dated total for any of those years reaches this record. The settling records are named: the Michiana Area Council of Governments' periodic trail inventories, which measure the region's network segment by segment, and the City of Mishawaka's project files for each phase. Until those are read, the ledger prints as it stands — honest, dated, and thin.