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Industrial — North Liberty
North Liberty never had a Mishawaka-scale fall to sell. Its industry began where its settlement began, on Potato Creek — a gristmill and a sawmill in 1837, the year of the plat — and it stayed a mill-and-trades town through Chapman's count of 1880: two large dry-goods stores, a planing mill, a gristmill, blacksmiths and stores, and one standing want, printed in Chapman and answered in 1893: the lack of a railroad. The railroads came, in 1893 and 1894, and both are gone. What replaced the wagon shops and the creamery country they fed is a single large modern works, the aluminum extrusion plant at 400 South Main Street, and a small industrial park in the town's southwest quadrant. This section tells that course at the size the record gives it, and names the measurements the record does not give.
The power source, at its true size: Potato Creek, not a rapids
1837 – c. late 1880s
The power here was a creek, and no carrier reached measures its fall. Potato Creek is a tributary of the Kankakee River; at the park three miles east its bordering marsh is remembered in the Indiana DNR's park brochure as once…
The first system whole: grain, timber and water
1837 – 1880
The first industrial system took in what the farms and woods around it produced. A gristmill grinds the township's grain; a sawmill saws its timber; both ran on the creek. The trades gathered after the Civil War in the banked order: Elijah Lee, blacksmith, 1865; the planing mill of the Cole Brothers, built 1866. Raw material, fuel and water as one system, in the iron-town sense of ore and charcoal, does not apply here and is not claimed: no iron working, no bog-ore digging and no charcoal burning for North Liberty was found in any carrier reached.
Ground succession on the mill ground: Cole Brothers to the North Liberty Manufacturing Company
1866 – 1873 and after
One works succeeded another on the town's early industrial ground. The banked spine carries the succession in three dated steps: the Cole Brothers' planing mill, built 1866; burned 1871; and reincorporated in 1873 as the North…
Power changing state: water, then the railroad age, then current — two transitions dated, one not
1837 – 1893 – present
Water power ends with the mills, about the late 1880s, and the next power age arrives by rail. The banked businesses record closes the creek mills at about the late 1880s. The Wabash's line passed through the town in 1893 and the…
The transformation counted as a ladder, with its missing rungs named
1880 – 2015
The ladder has three rungs, and the spaces between them are part of the record. Rung one, 1880: Chapman's count, banked above — one grist-mill, one planing-mill and manufacturing establishment, no hands counted. Rung two…
The labor the works drew, and housing tested
1865 – 2026
No carrier reached counts an immigrant workforce arriving for a North Liberty works. The modern plant's workforce is the first the record numbers: 120 employees in 2011, on Hydro Aluminum's own account of its revitalization…
The labor system from inside: one named local, no strike record reached
As of November 2026
The inside record reached is a single union fact, and it prints at that size.That makes the aluminum plant a United Auto Workers local's plant, Local 194, and it is the only named local or unit for any North Liberty works found. No strike, lockout, settlement or defeat at the plant or at any earlier town works was found in the newspapers and carriers reached; the absence prints as a searched absence, not as proof none occurred. Its settlers are the South Bend Tribune and Walkerton Independent runs on Hoosier State Chronicles and the UAW Local 194 record itself, neither exhausted here — a named gap.
The second industrial age: aluminum at 400 South Main
Before c. 1975 – November 2026
The second age has one works, and its founding is this section's largest gap. Trade press in 2011 calls it "the 50-year-old facility" (Trailer/Body Builders, 1 April 2011), which would bracket an origin near 1961; the two…
The long narrowing, dated removals, and what survives
c. late 1880s – November 2026
The creek mills close about the late 1880s. The banked businesses record carries the Main Street firms firm by firm, and this section does not retell them. The extrusion plant is, on every carrier reached, the industry that survives, and it survives at full operating strength, not as a remnant.