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THE GEOGRAPHIC PREMISE
The ground is a junction before it is anything else: the federal geographic-names record (GNIS feature 2396838) fixes the town that came later at 41.66472 degrees north, 86.07889 degrees west, at 735 feet of elevation — low ground by this county's measure, river ground, some sixty feet below the Harris Prairie upland to the north. The St. Joseph River runs along the frame's north rim, westward; Baugo Creek enters it from the south at the townsite, having crossed Penn Township from its rises in the township's southern farmland and the Elkhart County edge. The creek's mouth made the ground: a mill seat where the creek falls to the river, a ford and later a bridge where the east-west road crossed it, and a landing reach on a river that was the valley's first road. The civil frame that contains it is Penn Township, ordered on 6 May 1832, and the county frame is St. Joseph, organized in 1830. What follows is the record of this junction ground before any plat was drawn on it.