Power changing state: steam, water-works, current — a dated sequence with its gaps printed inside it

Row #6 · the sequence article; two of its dates are named gaps, by design

The sequence, dated where the record dates it and gapped where it does not, runs in five states. First, steam: the township's mills of the Chapman age — Miller's saw-mill on section 4 by 1880, and the milling line that stands corporately in 1916 — ran on steam, by the measured finding of this cluster's power test: no fall exists on this ground, and steam was the period's installable power. Second, water as a utility, dated exactly: the town's water-works was founded in 1879, proposed in 1871, financed on $7,000 of seven-percent bonds sold at par under G. H. Service's guarantee — the first power-adjacent work the town owned as a town, and the only nineteenth-century date in this sequence that is fully settled. Third, electric light and power, present but undated at its founding: as the record stands in November 2026, the town's municipal electric department buys its power from AEP and distributes it itself — a municipal distributor, not a generator — but the founding date of that department stands open in the banked set as GAP-NC3-UTIL-2, and it prints here as a gap inside the sequence, not filled: settler the town ordinance book and the department's own early records. Fourth, gas, likewise present and likewise undated at arrival: gas service on this ground is NIPSCO's, and its arrival date stands open as GAP-NC3-UTIL-3, settler the IURC filings for the town's gas service territory. Fifth, the generation age, at pointer size because this cluster owns the sequence, not the plants: the St. Joseph Energy Center, a 720-megawatt natural-gas combined-cycle plant in Olive Township, began generating in 2018; Honeysuckle Solar, 188 megawatts, entered service in 2024; and the township's present owner-record for the energy center closed in March 2025 with Wabash Valley Power Alliance and Hoosier Energy each taking a fifty-percent stake. The shape of the whole sequence is the finding: a town that began by burning wood and coal under boilers it owned ended by distributing current it buys, while generation — the thing it never did at municipal scale in the electric age — arrived around it at utility scale, on township ground, in other owners' hands.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), as banked: the water-works of 1879 (proposed 1871, $7,000 at 7 percent, Service's par guarantee); Miller's saw-mill, section 4.
2. This cluster, row #1: the steam finding and its basis.
3. Banked set, utilities frame: the municipal electric department buys from AEP and distributes itself; gas is NIPSCO; GAP-NC3-UTIL-2 (electric founding) and GAP-NC3-UTIL-3 (gas arrival) carried open with their settlers.
4. Hoosier Energy / Wabash Valley Power Alliance, joint-purchase announcements, March 2025: the St. Joseph Energy Center, 720 MW, generating since 2018, 165 acres, fifty-fifty purchase finalized March 2025.
5. Lightsource bp, Honeysuckle Solar project record: 188 MW, commercial operation 2024.