Pinhook Park and the Small River Parks

1918–present

Lead: Pinhook Park, the river park on Riverside Drive in the city's northwest, came to the parks from the county in the year of the armistice: the department's chronology records, for 1918, that "the Board acquired the Pinhook property from the County Commissioners" — the same hand-to-city channel that had delivered the fairgrounds twelve years before. Its building-out waited for the postwar bond era: the chronology places Pinhook among the three parks developed with the department's 1963 sale of $800,000 in bonds, and dates the opening of the Pinhook beach to 1964. The park stood on the 2017 riverfront framework's list of concept parks, and the chronology closes its entry with a modern line: "2021 — Grand re-opening of Pinhook Park." The 2021 inventory lists the park at 42.69 acres.

The river's smaller parks stand at the sizes their records give. Seitz Park, established in 1985 by the chronology, sits at the East Race's head on the river at Washington Street; the 2021 inventory carries it as "Seitz Park (formerly Belleville)" at 0.30 acres — the smallest property in the whole inventory — its dam and hydro ground told in the Rivers history. Island Park and Pier Park are chronology builds of the bicentennial years, completed 1975 and 1976 respectively; Pier Park stands in the 2021 inventory at 0.5 acres on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The East Race Waterway itself, opened in 1984, rides in the inventory as a 6.2-acre neighborhood property, the "East Bank Waterway"; its planning and digging are the Rivers chapter's story and the riverfront entry below.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, Master Plan Update 2021–2025 (chronology: the 1918 Pinhook acquisition; the 1963 bonds; the 1964 beach; Seitz Park established 1985; Island Park 1975; Pier Park 1976; the 2021 Pinhook reopening; inventory: Pinhook 42.69 acres; Seitz Park (formerly Belleville), 0.30 acres; Pier Park, 0.5 acres; East Bank Waterway, 6.2 acres).
2. Board of Park Commissioners minutes, 27 June 2017 (the riverfront framework's concept parks, Pinhook among them).
3. Rivers leg of this record (the East Race, the Seitz dam and the hydroelectric plant).