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Local Animals
Every other section of this record counts people. This one counts the other inhabitants of Mishawaka's ground: the buffalo that gave the river bottoms below this city their French name, the crappies that made the Mishawaka Impoundment the richest station on a whole-river survey, the steelhead counted one by one in the Central Park ladder, the livery horses of the 1868 directory, and the coyotes that filled a council meeting room in 2024. The discipline is the build's own. An animal stands here when an account, a survey, or an agency list with a date says it stood here; an animal is gone when the record stops, and the record's own statements of going are printed with their dates and their makers. What was looked for and not found is printed as not found, with the search shown. The county's full fauna record — Chapman's 1880 survey chapter at whole size, the marsh and the market gun, the falcons and the rookery test — stands in South Bend's local-animals file, because the county record is one record; this section prints Mishawaka's ground inside it, and everything the surveys, the agencies, and the press document on this ground itself.
The Baseline This Ground Shared: Chapman's County, 1880
St. Joseph County, 1880; Penn Township's share
The first survey of this ground's animals is a chapter of a book: the second chapter of Chapman's History of St. Joseph County (1880), a natural history of the county — quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes — compiled within living…
The Parkovash: Buffalo Ground Below This City
The French era to 1880; Howard's account, 1907
Mishawaka's river bottoms are named buffalo ground in the county's own history — not by a sighting, but by a habit the French hunters recorded in a place-name. Howard's county history (1907) gives the river bottoms their French…
The Departed Predators, at Township Size
Chapman's list, 1880; the searches of November 2026
Of the black wolf, the black bear, and the panther, Mishawaka's own record is a list and a silence. Chapman's 1880 chapter places all three among the animals that went "with or before" the buffalo, and his rare-and-going list…
The Deer and the Turkey: Gone, and Brought Back Past This Ground
1880 to the modern record
The two animals Mishawaka's residents now meet on the Riverwalk and in the park woods are both restorations, and the restoration record is a state record in which this ground's part is written by spread, not by release. The going…
The Rapids Fishery, and the Commercial Test
The founding record; the test run November 2026
The first animal industry of this ground was a fishery in broken water — and it fed a settlement, not a market. The city's commissioned history and the parks record agree on why the town stands where it stands: the rapids site…
The River's Fish in 1880, at This Reach
Chapman's fish list, St. Joseph County waters, 1880
"The waters of this county are quite prolific of the finny tribe." Chapman's fish chapter — the baseline every later survey of this reach is measured against — sorts the county's catch by the period's families. Among the game…
The First Stocking: Shad in the River, 1873
June 1873; the verdict of the basin's record
The St. Joseph's salmonid century had a false start, and its first documented stocking was not a salmon at all. The Michigan State Board of Fish Commissioners' work is summarized in the Michigan DNR's own research report on…
1972: The Survey That Found This Water Richest
July–August 1972; Michigan DNR Technical Report 75-9, October 1975
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…
Baugo Creek and the Tributary Survey, 1979
Collections of 1979; Marenchin & Sever, Saint Mary's College
The mainstem had its survey in 1972; the creeks got theirs seven years later, from the county's own college biologists. The scientific baseline for the drainage was Shelby Gerking's 1945 distribution study — sixty-eight species…
The Lampreys: Two Natives and an Invader
The tributary record, 1979; the lake's standing, 2026
The oldest fishes in this section's surveys are the lampreys, and the record holds two kinds of them. The natives first: the 1979 tributary survey collected lampreys in the drainage's small water — two specimens of an…
Bodine: The Hatchery on This Ground, at Animal Size
1983 to the present; the Indiana DNR's own accounts
The works stand in the parks file — the 1981 lease of 10.9 acres from American Electric Power, the Richard Clay Bodine State Fish Hatchery completed in 1983 on Mishawaka's east side. What stands here is the animal record of the…
The Ladder at Central Park, Counted
1991 to the present; the DNR's camera and the outdoors press
The ladder itself — the staircase of slotted chambers built in 1991 up the historic Mishawaka overflow Dam at Central Park — stands in the parks file as a work. Here it stands as a fish record: the top step of the reopened river…
The Sturgeon at the Top of Its River
The French era to the modern status record
Every fish in the two entries above this one can climb to Mishawaka. The river's greatest fish cannot, and its documented river ends at the base of this city's upper dam. The lake sturgeon's whole record — the spear-fish first…
The Kills That Are Not in the Record, and the Pollution Record That Is
The searches of November 2026; the IDEM record, 2000–2004
A city file of this kind is expected to have its fish kill — the spill, the die-off, the summer the river turned. The searches ran across the press record, the agency material, and the basin literature reached for this build: no…
The Humane Society: Mishawaka's Own
Incorporated 1886; on Grape Road to the present
This pass was briefed that the county humane society is South Bend's, to be printed at the boundary. The society's own record corrects the brief: the Humane Society of St. Joseph County is seated in Mishawaka, and it is this…
The Horse Economy's Animal Side: Livery Stables, and the Missing Veterinarian
The directory rolls, 1868–1921; the searches of November 2026
The farms and transit files own the horse economy's work. Its animal side — the trade that kept the horses themselves — stands in the directory rolls at exactly directory size, and it has a beginning, a middle, and a telling end.…
The Bear of 2015: The County's Visitor, at This City's Distance
June to October 2015; the journal record, 2018
Chapman's list had the black bear gone from this county before 1880. In the summer of 2015 the county had one again — for five months, on its western side, at a measured distance from this city, which the entry keeps. The Indiana…
The Alligator Test, and the Escapes That Are Not Here
The test run November 2026
Every river city keeps an alligator story, and this section was sent to test Mishawaka's class of them against the record. The record's answer is a turtle, in Michigan, in 1999. The searches ran across the press record and the…
The Present Tenants: Coyotes in the Meeting Room, a Buck on Main Street
November 2024; the outdoors press of the 2010s
The modern urban-wildlife record of Mishawaka is not a survey. It is a meeting, and a memory. The meeting is documented at press strength: on 12 November 2024, about forty Mishawaka residents met with city officials about coyotes…
The Counted Birds, and the Nests That Are Not on This Ground
The county record, 2015 to the present
The county's celebrated modern bird record — the eagles' return, the ospreys' concentration — is real, documented, and not Mishawaka's, and this entry exists to keep the boundary where the record puts it. The University of Notre…
The Record Now: What Stands Where, on This Ground
Mishawaka's fauna as the assembled record leaves it, November 2026
Read end to end, this section divides Mishawaka's animals into the same four companies as the county's — with this city's own names in each. The gone, on the record's word: the buffalo and elk of the Parkovash bottoms below this…
Kept and Mascot Animals: Clashmore Mike's Line, and Mishawaka's Empty Kennel
The kept animal who carries a city's name in this county is a dog across the river, and his line is a dynasty. Notre Dame's Irish terriers served as the football team's mascots for four decades. The line opens in January 1924…