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 neighboring jurisdictions and are the twin city's and Michigan's to tell; they are boundary-printed here at the size a river record needs, because the ladders that pass their fish and the ponding that slows the current are continuous with this city's reach. Upstream, Mishawaka holds two dams on the main stem — the Central Park dam, which received its fish ladder in 1991, a year before South Bend's, and the Twin Branch dam, a hydroelectric work — both Mishawaka's own, told in her record when it is built. Downstream in Michigan, the dams and their ladders step down at Niles, Buchanan and Berrien Springs, the last of them the great hydroelectric dam whose ladder is the gateway of the whole run; the five-ladder system they form with South Bend's stands in Local Animals. What the city's own reach holds besides its one dam is lesser works on lesser water: the headgates and control structures of the East Race at Seitz Park, told with the dam and in Industrial Revolution, and the buried course of Bowman Creek, told above. A river history that padded South Bend's dam roster with the county's mills and Michigan's hydro plants would be a worse history; the roster stands at one, and the one is told whole.

Sources:

1. This record's Local Animals section — the five-ladder system on the river (Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Niles in Michigan; Central Park, Mishawaka, 1991; South Bend, 1992) and the dams they serve, cross-referenced; the negative for a second in-city dam rests on the whole record reached for this build, which names no other.