The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
June 1915
When the circus came to the valley in June 1915, it pitched across the line — and the South Bend News-Times recorded what Mishawaka did about it. On its Mishawaka page of 10 June 1915 the paper wrote that "Mishawaka emptied itself into South Bend Thursday to see the circus," that from early morning the street cars were packed, and that the town had never been so quiet on a week day in its history. The item does not name the show, and no name is supplied here.
The entry is printed at exactly that size because it fixes the standing geography of the valley's animal entertainment in the streetcar age: the animals stood in South Bend, and Mishawaka went to them. The zoo that South Bend founded six years later inherited that geography whole — Mishawaka's children were always going to be its visitors, never its keepers.
Principal sources
- South Bend News-Times, 10 June 1915 (Mishawaka page), read first-hand.