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 South Bend section and Industrial Revolution — served the east-side mills for a century, and was filled in about 1954, when the power it carried had gone to wires. A generation later the city dug it out again and rebuilt it as a river work of a new kind: the East Race Waterway, opened in 1984, some 2,000 feet of course — 1,900 feet from start to finish in the visitors' bureau's telling — falling about twelve feet from its headgates below the dam to its return to the river, its flow governed by three headgates as the mill headgates had governed it, and the first artificial whitewater course built in North America. As a river work it stands here whole: the race is the dam's second channel, the one piece of the 1840s power system still carrying the river's water on its original errand of controlled descent. Its sporting life — the Olympic team trials it hosted, the racers it formed, and its closure for the 2026 season for updates — stands in Famous Locations and is pointed to, not retold. The West Race survives in the opposite way: not as water but as a street plan, its course under the downtown grid told in Industrial Revolution.

The rest of the modern river is a front yard, assembled over fifty years: The parks line along the banks — Howard Park, Island Park, Seitz Park at the dam, Leeper Park below the Michigan Street bridge, Pinhook Park on the river's lagoon north of the city — and the riverwalk that stitches them are told in this record's Communities and Trails sections; the River Lights, first lit in 2015 for the city's hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, with their commissioning record in Arts and Famous Locations, are pointed to the same way. What belongs to this section is the sum. The city that dammed the river for power, drank it until its wells ran purer, and sewered into it until the federal government made it stop now describes the St. Joseph, in the first line of its own 2012 utilities briefing to its council, as "the City's most treasured natural resource." The sentence is a politician's, and it is printed as one; but the works around it are not rhetoric — a dam of 1844 making a university's electricity, a ladder of 1992 passing the lake's fish, a race of the 1840s carrying whitewater boats, a sewer system being rebuilt under federal order to a 2038 deadline, and a gauge on Riverside Drive still ruling the line between the river as treasure and the river as the 12.70 feet of February 2018.

Sources:

1. Visit South Bend Mishawaka and the City of South Bend, as carried in this record's Industrial Revolution section — the East Race Waterway (opened 1984; about 2,000 feet of course, 1,900 feet start to finish; a fall of about twelve feet; three headgates; the first artificial whitewater course in North America); its Famous Locations section for the course's sporting record and 2026 closure; both cross-referenced.
2. City of South Bend, Department of Public Works, "City of South Bend Utilities" briefing (April 2012) — "The St. Joseph River is the City's most treasured natural resource," printed as the city's own characterization.
3. This record's Spine (the River Lights first lit for SB150, 2015), Arts and Famous Locations sections (the River Lights' commissioning record), and Communities and Trails sections (the riverfront parks line and the riverwalk) — cross-referenced.