The wartime installation, whole: the proving ground under the Army, 1943–1945

Item 5 — the county's wartime-installation test run for this ground — one installation, at its true size

One wartime installation did stand on this township's ground — not a camp, not an airfield, not an ordnance plant, but a civilian proving ground taken over by the Army Ordnance Department for the last two years of the Second World War. The ground is the Studebaker Proving Ground, laid out in 1926 when the Studebaker Corporation purchased some 850 acres from area farmers south of New Carlisle, in Olive Township — the first controlled automotive proving ground of an American automobile company, with its 1926 Colonial Revival clubhouse and, from 1938, the half-mile pine-tree sign spelling STUDEBAKER, planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Banked shorthand in this build calls it "the Bendix proving ground," from its later owner; the wartime record is Studebaker's. On 29 March 1943 the U.S. Army Ordnance Department signed a contract with Studebaker for use of the facility as a military vehicle testing ground; the Army Corps of Engineers converted the grounds, military testing began 20 June 1943, and the contract was terminated 30 June 1945, when the ground returned to Studebaker for civilian testing. The county parks' own history of the ground agrees in its summary line: "1943 — The U.S. Army takes over the proving grounds for military testing. The Clubhouse houses Commissioned Army officers," and a 26-acre parcel within the ground is described in the same history as passing from army barracks to a private residence. The marker on the ground adds that the clubhouse served "as barracks for the US Army." What was NOT here prints with equal plainness, because the installation test was run for the whole class: no airfield stood in Olive Township in either world war, no troop camp, no ordnance plant, no prisoner-of-war camp appears in any record reached — the county's one Civil War training camp, Camp Rose, where the 99th, 73rd and 87th Indiana Volunteer Infantry were organized and trained, stood at the old fairgrounds in South Bend (Leland and Portage Avenues), and no successor camp of 1917–18 or 1941–45 is seated in this township in the published record. After the war the ground's course is civilian again: sold to the Bendix Corporation in 1966, which donated 175 acres including the clubhouse and tree sign to the new St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Board — Bendix Woods County Park, opened as the county's first park — while the proving ground itself continued under Bendix, then Bosch, then Navistar (International). The wartime installation whole is therefore exactly one entry long: a borrowed automobile test track, under Army contract for twenty-seven months.

Sources:

1. U.S. Auto Industry World War Two, Studebaker Proving Ground page — Army Ordnance Department contract of 29 March 1943; Corps of Engineers conversion; testing from 20 June 1943; contract terminated 30 June 1945.
2. St. Joseph County Parks, Bendix Woods history — 1926 purchase; 1938 CCC tree sign; "1943: The U.S. Army takes over the proving grounds for military testing. The Clubhouse houses Commissioned Army officers"; 1966 Bendix donation of 175 acres.
3. National Register nomination, Studebaker Clubhouse and Tree Sign (1985) — clubhouse and trees "three miles south of New Carlisle," part of the Studebaker Corporation's Proving Ground; 800-acre ground sold to Bendix in 1966.
4. Historical Marker Database, "Rooted in Studebaker History" marker, Bendix Woods — 850 acres purchased 1926; clubhouse uses including "barracks for the US Army"; Bendix Woods County Park opened 1967.
5. Indiana Historical Bureau marker record, Camp Rose — Leland & Portage Avenues, South Bend; 99th, 73rd and 87th Indiana Volunteer Infantry organized and trained there.