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Rivers: The St. Joseph, Whole
Every other section of this record treats the river as the stage. This one treats it as the subject. The St. Joseph River is the reason there is a city here at all: it comes down out of Michigan flowing south, makes the southernmost bend of its whole course at this place, and turns back north to Lake Michigan — and everything in this history, from the portage to the plow works to the consent decree, is downstream of that turn. What follows is the river's own record: its course and its names, the creeks that feed it inside the city, the boats that worked it and the lock that failed them, the dam that still stands in it, the bridges that have crossed it one after another at the same few sites, the century in which the city drank from it and then dirtied it and then undertook, at federal order, to clean it, and the measured line of its floods. The fish are counted in Local Animals, the flood disasters in Major Events, the power the river made in Industrial Revolution; here the water itself is the subject.
The river itself: two hundred miles of water, two rivers of one name
THE COURSE, AS THE SURVEYS CARRY IT
The river that names the city is a Michigan river on an Indiana errand: The St. Joseph rises in Hillsdale County, Michigan, at Baw Beese Lake near the county seat — within five miles, the federal watershed record notes, of the…
The bend itself
THE FEATURE THE CITY IS NAMED FOR
The bend is a change of mind in the water: A river running south meets, at this ground, the low divide that separates the Lake Michigan drainage from the Kankakee's, and instead of cutting through it the St. Joseph turns — first…
The river's names
FOUR LANGUAGES OF RECORD
The oldest name is about what the river does: The Miami-Illinois name for the river is carried in the scholarly record as saakiiweesiipiiwi , also written Sakiwäsipi — "Outlet River," the coming-out river, a name for its function…
The city's tributary: Bowman Creek, and the creek the boatmen named
THE FEEDERS INSIDE THE CITY LINE
One creek inside the city has a documented life of its own: Bowman Creek is a two-mile tributary of the St. Joseph that belongs wholly to South Bend. The city's own account of it, in the mayor's news release of 27 April 2010 that…
The working river: keelboats, steamboats, and the lock that leaked
1831 TO 1911
For the city's first twenty years, everything came by water: Until the railroad reached South Bend in 1851, every barrel of merchandise in its stores and every emigrant's household goods arrived up this river, and the record of…
The dam of 1844, as a work in the river
1844 TO THE PRESENT STRUCTURE
One dam crosses the river inside this city, and it has been there since 1844: The power system the dam headed — the east and west races, the mills that lined them, the Oliver hydro plant, the gathering of the rights into a single…
The other dams on the reach: a printed negative and the boundary line
THE CITY'S REACH, DAM BY DAM
The dam at the bend is the only dam on the main river inside the city: That is a finding, printed as one: in the record reached, no second dam stands on the St. Joseph inside South Bend's limits. The river's other dams belong to…
The crossings: a succession of bridges at each site
1831 TO THE PRESENT SPANS
The first crossing was a ferry, and it stood where La Salle Avenue stands: The crossing place at old Water Street, now La Salle Avenue, is one of the first spots where the river was crossed in this area; in 1831 Nehemiah B.…
The river as the city's cup — and the giving of it up
THE WATER WORKS' TWO ERAS
South Bend drank from its river first, and stopped within a generation: The city's water works drew on the river at the dam: Chapman, writing in 1880, describes the municipal works taking river water above the dam through head…
The river as sewer: the combined system and the federal case
THE DOCUMENTED COURSE TO THE CONSENT DECREE OF 2011
What the city stopped taking from the river, it spent a century putting back: South Bend's sewers were built combined — storm water and sanitary sewage in the same pipes, sized for dry weather. In wet weather the system relieved…
The cleanup: smart sewers, the amended decree, and the state of the work in 2026
2012 TO THE 2038 HORIZON
The first phase was finished on time, and the river's ledger improved measurably: The city's wastewater record, as its own page stands updated in April 2026, carries Phase 1 of the control plan as completed in 2017 at a cost of…
The floods as river: the gauge's own table
THE MEASURED LINE, AND WHAT STANDS OUTSIDE IT
The disasters stand in Major Events; here the water's own arithmetic stands: The river at South Bend is a measured river. Its gauge — the U.S. Geological Survey's station 04101225, St. Joseph River at South Bend, read by the…
The river in use: the race reborn, the lights, and the front yard
1984 TO THE PRESENT
The river's last transformation returned it to play, on the mill race's own course: The East Race was dug in the 1840s as a mill race off this dam — its builder and exact year stand in the printed conflict carried by the Story of…