The East Race: whitewater through downtown

The millrace that came back as a playground. The channel began as industry: a millrace dug in 1843, by former Mayor Roger Parent's account, to carry the river's power to the factories of the west bank, later abandoned and filled in during the 1950s as a hazard nobody wanted. In the early 1980s, under Parent's administration, the city dug its own millrace back out and rebuilt it as a whitewater course, and in 1984 the East Race Waterway opened: by the visitor bureaus' account, the first man-made whitewater course in North America, 1,900 feet of Class 2 rapids running through the middle of downtown, city owned and city run.

What it did to the riverfront family map. Elite paddlers trained and raced on the East Race, and that history belongs to SPORTS; this section claims the rafts. Rafting on the East Race is a family product in the plainest sense: guided rafts, summer weekends, children tall enough to meet the requirements riding a whitewater course their great-grandparents' generation knew as a buried ditch. Together with Howard Park below it and the riverwalk system around it, the East Race turned South Bend's downtown riverfront from the back of the factories into the front of the city's family geography, the place the tourist guides lead with, and it did it with a piece of 1843 industrial plumbing.

Sources

1. Visit South Bend Mishawaka (visitsouthbend.com) and Visit Indiana, East Race Waterway listings: opened 1984; first man-made whitewater course in North America; 1,900 feet; Class 2 rapids; city owned.
2. Former Mayor Roger O. Parent, account in Notre Dame Stories podcast transcript: millrace dug 1843; filled in during the 1950s; dug out in the early 1980s under his administration.