Bendix Woods: the proving ground's gift, and the largest living sign

1926–2026 · 32132 Indiana 2, Olive Township; St. Joseph County Parks; the county's first county park

The county's park system begins three miles south of town, in a forest planted to spell a name: in 1926 the Studebaker Corporation developed its 800-acre proving ground on this ground, clubhouse and all — the industrial course is the Businesses leg's — and planted, to be read from the air, the word STUDEBAKER in pine trees: some 8,000 of them, the letters roughly 200 feet high and the sign spanning about half a mile. The planting date prints in conflict, whole: the National Register nomination for the Studebaker Clubhouse and Tree Sign dates the planting to 1938, by the Civilian Conservation Corps; the county parks' own master-plan text says the trees were "planted in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps." The carriers are not reconciled; the nomination is the stronger instrument and the county's own text is the nearer one, and both stand. The sign was listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 1987 as the world's largest living sign — the claim carried at its carrier's strength, a dated listing, not a standing record. In 1966 the Bendix Corporation, which had bought the 800-acre proving ground from Studebaker, donated 175 acres including the clubhouse and the tree sign to the newly formed St. Joseph County Parks & Recreation Board — a deed in kind, carried also in the Specialty file's donations article — and the ground became the county's first county park; fifteen more acres were purchased in 1969. The park's size prints in the small conflict its carriers keep: the county's park page says 190 acres; its master plan says 195. Inside it: a 27-acre state-dedicated nature preserve of beech-maple forest; more than five miles of hiking trails; mountain-bike trails managed by the Northern Indiana Mountain Bike Association — the township's one documented bike-trail system, carried in the trails article below; a sledding hill, fishing ponds and picnic shelters; the Studebaker-Bendix Heritage Trail running through; and the 1926 clubhouse, a nature center since 1967, now with a Children's Discovery Room. The park's own festival is the sugar camp's: Sugar Camp Days, each March — the county brochure says the second weekend, and calls it the largest annual special event the county park staff coordinates; a travel carrier's third-weekend telling stands as the weaker carrier and prints as such. Part of the original proving ground is used by Navistar today, at the county's edge of the story — pointer to Businesses, where the ground's working life belongs.

Sources:

1. National Park Service, National Register nomination, Studebaker Clubhouse and Tree Sign (entered January 1985) — the 1926 proving ground and clubhouse; the tree sign planted 1938 by the CCC, ~8,000 pines; the 1966 Bendix purchase and donation of 175 acres to the newly formed parks board.
2. St. Joseph County Parks (sjcparks.org) — the park page (190 acres; the first county park; the nature preserve; the trails; the Guinness listing of 1987) and the Five Year Master Plan 2019–2023 (195 acres; "planted in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps"; the 1969 fifteen-acre purchase; Sugar Camp Days as the staff's largest annual event, second weekend of March by the park brochure).
3. Visit South Bend Mishawaka (the Navistar use of the proving-ground ground; the heritage trail) — pointer strength.