The river as transit: the ford, the ferry of 1834, and the subscription bridge of 1837

1834-1908 · THE CROSSING AS A SERVICE

Before the bridge: Mishawaka stands where it stands because of a crossing. The Potawatomi village at the rapids was drawn, on De Kever's account, by a ford near a natural rapids in the St. Joseph River, and Alanson Hurd's town was bisected by the Vistula Road, the region's major east-west route — the road the crossing served. The first organized crossing service was a ferry: the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker at the southwest corner of Main Street and Mishawaka Avenue records that the first bridge replaced a ferry which had operated here from 1834, and the 1875 illustrated atlas of St. Joseph County carries the same beginning in its own sequence — the first ferry across the St. Joseph River was established in 1834.

The subscription bridge and the toll test: In 1837 the crossing became a bridge. The marker's text is the record: the first bridge across the St. Joseph River was built at this place in 1837 at a cost of $2,499, and was paid for by popular subscription. The mechanism matters to this section, because it is the opposite of a toll bridge: Mishawaka's documented first crossing was free, bought outright by the community that used it. No toll on any Mishawaka crossing appears in the record reached — not on the first bridge, whose financing is documented, and not on any successor — and the toll question is therefore answered at exactly that strength: no toll schedule for a Mishawaka crossing survives in the sources reached, and the one crossing whose financing is documented was subscription-paid. The bridge line itself, at the anchor size this section carries (the bridges whole belong to Parks and River): the 1837 bridge was replaced by the red covered bridge — dated 1846 by the marker and 1847 by De Kever, a one-year conflict printed whole — then by an iron truss bridge in 1874, on which both accounts agree, and by the present concrete Main Street bridge, dated 1907 by the marker and completed 1908 in De Kever's account as the Story of Mishawaka section carries it, the second one-year conflict standing as printed. In 1837 the town also built a road over the marsh that separated it from the hills to the south, on De Kever's account, giving its industry access to southern Penn and Madison Townships — the crossing's first feeder road, and the beginning of the city's transit geography in every sense.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1968.2, "First Bridge" — the ferry operating from 1834; the first bridge of 1837 at $2,499 by popular subscription; the covered bridge of 1846, the iron truss of 1874 and the concrete bridge of 1907 (dates in conflict with De Kever printed in the entry).
2. Higgins, Belden & Co., Illustrated Atlas of St. Joseph County (1875) — the first ferry across the St. Joseph River established in 1834.
3. Peter De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the ford at the rapids; the Vistula Road as the region's major east-west route; the red covered bridge standing from 1847 to 1874 and the concrete Main Street Bridge completed 1908 (conflicts printed in the entry); the 1837 road over the marsh to the south.