Rum Village Park: The Woodland Purchase and Its New Plan

1916–present; master plan 2025–2026

Lead: Rum Village is the system's great woodland, and it came by purchase, not gift: the department's chronology records, in the middle of the First World War, "1916 — Rum Village Park acquired for $45,000." The ground — the rolling, wooded tract on the southwest side whose naming and neighborhood the Communities history tells — became the city's nature park: the 2021–2025 master plan describes 160 acres of rolling woodland holding a nature center, a dog park, an eighteen-hole disc golf course, mountain-bike and hiking trails, and for eight and a half seasons an aerial adventure park, which closed before the 2024 season; the department's inventory adds a 32.51-acre Rum Village Annex across Gertrude Street. For a quarter-century the park also held the city's second zoo, the Storyland children's zoo, told at its size in the Zoo chapter. The park's trails are the Trails chapter's record; this entry carries the ground's park history and its plan.

The newest plan in the whole system belongs to this park. When the Rum Village Neighborhood Plan was adopted in 2022, the city committed itself to a master plan for the park, and the process ran from August 2025 into 2026 under the Chicago firm Site Design Group: a first community event on 6 September 2025 drew more than 150 participants, a second followed on 29 January 2026, and the final draft was unveiled at an open house on 10 June 2026 — the proposal for a beginner mountain-bike trail through the main park's old-growth woods, which residents had opposed at the March 2026 park board meeting and in letters to the Tribune, having been dropped. The plan's signature proposal is a tree canopy walk rising along the ridge above Ewing Avenue, with a community center beside it, a renovated nature center, an accessible Red Oak Trail and disc-golf changes; it is phased across as much as twenty years, with money in hand for a first phase — repaving and striping the park road as a shared-use path — to be sought from Redevelopment Commission funds. The final plan was presented to the Board of Park Commissioners on 15 June 2026 for its vote and published by the department. The plan document describes Rum Village as "approximately 200 acres" and the region's second-largest local park; the department's 2021 inventory measures the park at 160 acres with the 32.51-acre annex beside it. The two figures stand as their documents give them.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, Master Plan Update 2021–2025 (chronology: Rum Village acquired 1916, $45,000; community description: 160 acres of rolling woodland; inventory: Rum Village Park 160 acres, Rum Village Annex 32.51 acres).
2. Rum Village Park Master Plan (City of South Bend / Site Design Group, published 2026): the 1916 acquisition; the park at approximately 200 acres; the plan's contents and phasing.
3. South Bend Tribune, 3 February 2026 (the January 2026 engagement event; the park's attractions; the aerial course's eight and a half seasons), 5 and 12 June 2026 (the final draft; the 10 June open house; the 15 June 2026 board presentation and expected vote; the 2022 neighborhood plan commitment; Phase 1 funding) and letters, 18 March 2026 (the opposition to the mountain-bike trail at the 16 March 2026 board meeting).
4. Communities and Zoo legs of this record (the Rum Village name and neighborhood; the Storyland Zoo).