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LEG 28 · ITEM 11 · RUN B #148 · THE BENDIX FIELD TEST, APPLIED AND CORRECTED
Some famous things have no ground you can stand on, and the honest treatment is to print them as unfindable rather than to invent them a site: this ground holds two. The first is the 1903 Baugo Bay dam: the bay's creation is credited, in the town's circulating telling, to a dam built on Baugo Creek in 1903 — a date that rests on a single Lincoln Highway guide, repeated by a road-history blog of December 2025, with no owner record, no newspaper account and no physical site produced in any search (Famous Stories & the Record prints the claim's custody whole). There is no dam ruin, abutment or marked site on the creek that any record ties to 1903; the only owner-documented 1903 dam in the neighborhood is Twin Branch's, on the river. The claim is, as a location, fame without a ground. The second is William Ireland's first sawmill of 1833: the town history gives Ireland a dam, a bridge and the locality's first sawmill in that year, sited in its telling behind the present American Legion hall — but neither county history carries the claim (the books give the first mills to 1831 or 1832 and leave the builder unnamed), so the site rests on one unconfirmed telling, and no ground can be pointed to as the 1833 mill's. Both claims keep their names and their custodians; neither gets a pin on the map.
A correction rides with the test, because the pattern's name invites a misfiling: Bendix Field, the checklist's example of fame without a ground, is not groundless at all — its ground is findable and stands in daily use. Vincent Bendix bought 610 acres northwest of South Bend in 1929; Bendix Field (Bendix Municipal Airport) opened there in 1933; the county bought it in 1937; and the field operates today as South Bend International Airport, its name-succession (Bendix Field, St. Joseph County Airport, Michiana Regional, South Bend Regional, South Bend International from 23 April 2014) documented by the airport authority itself. Whatever is unfindable about Bendix is in Fort Wayne's telling, not this valley's geography; on this ground the unfindable fame is the dam and the mill above, and they are printed as such.
Verdict, item 11 — DUG (the two unfindable-ground cases printed as such; the pattern's example corrected on this valley's record).
Sources: Famous Stories & the Record (1903 claim custody; Ireland claim verdict); The Story of Osceola (mill record); South Bend International Airport authority history (flysbn.com — 610 acres, 1929; Bendix Field; name succession to 23 Apr 2014); Indiana Transportation History, aviation around South Bend/Mishawaka (county purchase 1937). Searches run 11 Nov 2026.