The remains, and the river put back to work

1945–2022

The industrial landscape was unbuilt piece by piece, and then partly rebuilt as something else: The races died as property first. In the late 1940s, as the Businesses section records, Indiana & Michigan Electric gathered in the races' power rights, and about 1954 the East Race — the channel dug in the 1840s, fought over in the Supreme Court, and lined with nine plants in 1885 — was filled in, a derelict ditch in a downtown that no longer needed it. On the west side the Oliver works stood until 1973, when the plant and its hydro-electric station were demolished; Century Center rose on the ground in 1977, a convention hall on the footprint of the chilled-plow works. The East Bank kept fragments in industrial use — lathe works into the 1960s — and the city's later clearances and reuses of the Studebaker ground belong to the Businesses and Spine records.

Then the current turned. In the early 1980s the city dug its filled East Race out again and rebuilt the channel as the East Race Waterway, opened in 1984: about 2,000 feet of course — 1,900 feet start to finish — with a total fall of about 12 feet, its flow governed by three headgates as the mill headgates had governed it, and the first artificial whitewater course in North America. The water runs for rafters now, on summer weekends, down the same grade the Harpers' saw-mill drew on. And in 2022 the bend's power history closed its own circle. The University of Notre Dame's hydroelectric facility, ND Hydro, built beneath Seitz Park from 2019 under a 2016 agreement that transferred the city's existing federal exemption, began generating in May 2022 and was dedicated on 12 September 2022: 2.5 megawatts from ten turbines, expected to supply about 7 per cent of the university's electricity, relying — in the words of the industry press — on "the existing concrete and timber crib dam which was originally constructed in 1844." It is the third generation of power-making at that dam: the races' wheels first, the Oliver-era hydro plant on the west race second, and now turbines under a park, on the same fall of water that a glass company failed to use in 1836 and two power companies fought over in 1843. The industrial revolution at the bend began with men digging a ditch to make a river work. It has not, in the end, stopped.

Sources:

1. This build's Businesses and Spine sections — Indiana & Michigan Electric's gathering of the races' power rights in the late 1940s, the East Race's filling about 1954, the Oliver plant and hydro-electric station demolished in 1973 and Century Center built in 1977; cross-referenced.
2. Visit South Bend (visitsouthbend.com), East Race Waterway — approximately 2,000 feet long with a total fall of about 12 feet, three headgates controlling the water level, the course itself 1,900 feet, the first artificial whitewater course in North America, opened 1984.
3. University of Notre Dame, news release, September 12, 2022 — the dedication of ND Hydro: 2.5 megawatts, beneath Seitz Park, generating since May 2022, ten turbines turned by the headwater of the existing concrete and timber crib dam between Seitz and Island parks, work begun 2019, the project dating to the 2016 agreement with the city and its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exemption.
4. Renewable Energy World, September 14, 2022 — the plant commissioned May 2022, expected to produce about 7 per cent of the campus's electricity.
5. Water Power Magazine, November 2022 — the third hydropower project at the dam; the original two-race system; the city's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licence exemption sought and received in 1980 for a facility at Seitz Park.