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1921 to the present · South Bend
The valley's zoo is Potawatomi Zoo, 500 S. Greenlawn Avenue, South Bend — and it is South Bend's, plainly. Deer had been kept in Potawatomi Park since 1912; the zoo proper was founded on 21 May 1921, when the park board accepted Erskine's gift of deer and voted the first appropriation, and it has grown into what its own account calls Indiana's oldest zoo: 23 acres and more than 400 animals, accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. South Bend's section of this history tells that institution whole; nothing here claims a share of it for Mishawaka.
The documented Mishawaka tie is older than the zoo and smaller than a partnership, and it is printed at its exact size: in June 1920, a year before the founding gift, Mishawaka High School held its first annual picnic at Potawatomi Park — about 400 pupils and teachers carried over by special street cars, to the park where the deer already were. South Bend's own zoo record, checked, carries no Mishawaka school program, sponsorship, or shared governance at any date. The tie that exists is the streetcar and the picnic; the zoo itself belongs to the city across the line, and Mishawaka's children have been its guests for a century.
Principal sources
- This build's South Bend history — the Potawatomi Zoo section (park board minutes, 21 May 1921; the zoo's own present account).
- South Bend News-Times, 9 June 1920 (Mishawaka High School picnic item), read first-hand.