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1984 · the East Race Waterway, downtown
The opening: In 1984 the city dug its buried millrace back out and made it a river again. The East Race of 1843, filled in as a hazard in the 1950s, was rebuilt under Mayor Roger O. Parent's administration — over documented argument in the community, for and against, that the mayor himself recalled four decades later — as an artificial whitewater course through the downtown, billed by the city as the first such course in North America. The building of it, and the redevelopment it anchored, belong to the Story of South Bend section; the gathering is here: from its first season the waterway was a place the city came to watch and to ride, 1,900 feet of Class II water by the parks department's measure — some paddling accounts give 1,500 feet and more — running between the downtown banks. The exact day of the 1984 opening, and any opening crowd, were not pinned in the record reached for this section, and are named here as a gap rather than dressed.
Its event life: The waterway's calendar is the summer weekend: operated by the parks department on weekends from June toward September, noon to five, and each March it takes the St. Patrick's season's green dye below the parade route — the greening told in the St. Patrick's entry below. A course built as an argument about whether downtown could be a destination became, in the plainest test, one of the downtown things a crowd could do.
Sources:
- City of South Bend / South Bend Venues Parks & Arts — the waterway's billing as the first artificial whitewater course in North America, its season and hours; the Story of South Bend section section of this history for the 1843 race and the redevelopment.
- Round the Bend Now and Then, July 16, 2023 — former Mayor Roger Parent on building the East Race, the filled-in 1843 original, and the community argument for and against.
- Daily Herald (Chicago), March 19, 2023, and the American whitewater course directories — the course's length as variously given, 1,900 feet and 1,500-plus feet.