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Weird Facts · the strange-but-documented record
Every city accumulates a drawer of facts that sound invented. This section is South Bend's drawer, opened and checked. Each entry below is a genuine oddity of the record — a boat that graded a street by being dragged down it, a courthouse that turned around instead of falling down, a zoo founded on one deer, a theatre sold for one dollar — and each carries the source it stands on. Where an oddity is told in full elsewhere in this history, the entry here is short and points to its home section. Where a famous local oddity does not survive checking, it is not printed here at all; those are worked, telling and record side by side, in the Stories Told and Folklore sections, and the closing entry points to them so this drawer is complete. Nothing in this section rests on an unsourced "did you know."
Two rivers with one name, born five miles apart
THE FRAME · THE RIVER THAT NAMES THE CITY
The pair: Indiana has two St. Joseph Rivers, and they are not the same river. South Bend's rises at Baw Beese Lake in Hillsdale County, Michigan — within five miles, the federal watershed record notes, of the headwaters of the…
Ox-Head Prairie, named for a head of monstrous size
17 SEPTEMBER 1721 · THE COUNTY'S DEEP-TIME FOOTPRINT
The naming: The earliest dated animal record in this county's history is a name on a map. Charlevoix, camped on the portage on 17 September 1721, named Ox-Head Prairie for "the head of an ox of monstrous size" found there.…
The boat that graded a street by being dragged down it
1832 · THE ANTELOPE, LAUNCHED OVERLAND
The dragging: South Bend's first street grading was done by a boat. Peter Johnson, a South Bend carpenter, built the keelboat Fairplay in 1831 out of a French trader's pirogue split lengthwise; the year after came the first real…
The patrons' Insurrection of 1837
1837 · THE PRICE OF A BED, SETTLED BY REVOLT
The revolt: The earliest documented contest over the price of a bed in South Bend was won by the guests. The Eagle, the town's house at three dollars, stood at the head of a combination: the keepers of the town's houses organized…
The carriage of Lincoln's last ride stands in South Bend
14 APRIL 1865 · AND THE ROOM IT STANDS IN
The barouche: The carriage Abraham Lincoln rode to Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination, 14 April 1865, is a Studebaker, and it stands in South Bend. It stands in company: the carriage the Marquis de Lafayette used on…
The courthouse that turned around
NOVEMBER 1895 – 27 FEBRUARY 1896 · MOVED, NOT RAZED
The turn: When St. Joseph County built its new courthouse, it did not demolish the old one. It turned it around. The 1853–55 courthouse stood in the new building's way; the county hired Harvey Sheeler of Chicago, and beginning 19…
The vice president's son, mayor at twenty-eight
1898–1902 · THE YOUNGEST MAYOR IN THE CITY'S HISTORY
The mayor: South Bend's eleventh mayor was the son of the most famous man the city ever sent to Washington. Schuyler Colfax III — son of Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House and Grant's vice president — was twenty-eight when he…
The Clydesdales still haul South Bend wagons
ABOUT 1900 · THE BEER WAGONS
The wagons: The most-watched wagons in America are South Bend wagons. The beer wagons the Budweiser Clydesdales still haul — the hitch that parades at fairs, ballparks and Super Bowls — are Studebaker wagons of about 1900, built…
The fountain that was given twice
21 JULY 1906 · DISMANTLED 1941 · REDEDICATED 2019
The gift: John M. Studebaker had seen an elaborate cast-iron fountain at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, and he commissioned one like it — electrified — as a gift to the city. The Studebaker Electric Fountain…
"Soft Drinks," the largest trade in town
1921 · PROHIBITION, IN THE DIRECTORY'S OWN WORD
The euphemism: In the first full year of national Prohibition, the largest single trade family in South Bend's classified directory was "Soft Drinks." The Owners Roster section of this history, built from the directories…
A zoo founded on one deer
MAY 1921 · THE SMALLEST FOUNDING GIFT IN THIS RECORD
The deer: The Potawatomi Zoo began with a single animal, given. In May 1921 the Board of Park Commissioners accepted the offer of Albert Russell Erskine, president of the Studebaker Corporation, of one deer as the foundation for…
The marker in bronze that gets it wrong
1928 · MICHIGAN STREET AND LASALLE AVENUE
The sentence: Before the state set a single marker in this county, the city marked its own founding — in bronze, and wrong. In 1928 the Rotary Club of South Bend erected a marker at Michigan Street and LaSalle Avenue reading, in…
The name written for airplanes
1937 · A HALF MILE OF PINES, READ FROM THE SKY
The sign: The largest piece of advertising South Bend ever made was addressed to the sky. On the proving ground Studebaker opened in 1926 near New Carlisle — the first controlled outdoor proving ground built by an American…
The graveyard of prototypes
THE PROVING GROUND'S WOODED CORNER · FOUND, NOT FABLED
The corner: Every car company has folklore; Studebaker's includes a boneyard that turned out to be true. At a remote wooded corner inside the proving ground's oval, the company discarded its worn prototypes — the "Studebaker…
The bookmobile the carmaker built
1953 · A STUDEBAKER, CARRYING BOOKS
The vehicle: In 1953 the public library put its first bookmobile on the road — "the Library's first Bookmobile served residents who were not served by a branch," in the library's own history — and the vehicle was a hometown…
The theatre that sold for one dollar
1959 · THE PALACE, SAVED AT A NOMINAL PRICE
The price: The best-documented rescue in this record cost one dollar. The Palace Theatre — the Orpheum-circuit palace of 1922 on North Main Street, a million-dollar house on hundred-thousand-dollar land — came to the end of its…
Toro, recovered from a car trunk
1965 · THE OCELOT AND PAUL HARVEY
The theft: In 1965 the Potawatomi Zoo made national news, once. Vandals stole Toro, the zoo's ocelot, and the small spotted cat was found by South Bend city police in the trunk of a car. The theft and recovery were carried on…
A whitewater course in the mill race
REOPENED 1984 · OLYMPIC TRIALS, APRIL 2004
The course: Downtown South Bend runs a whitewater course through its old mill race. The East Race — the channel dug in the 1840s to power the city's industry, filled and forgotten after its working life — was dug out and rebuilt…
The falcons of the towers
A NEST BOX ABOUT 1993 · SIXTY-THREE CHICKS, 2003–2025
The tenants: For more than two decades, the fastest animals on earth have raised their young on South Bend's tallest buildings. The story begins with a box: a South Bend Tribune photograph from 2002, its caption preserved in the…
The first public library on the web
1994 · A FIRST TOO SMALL FOR ITS OWN LEG, UNTIL NOW
The page: South Bend's library was early to every machine. It purchased its first computer system in 1982, and in 1983 became one of Indiana's first public libraries with an online catalog. In 1994, the library's history records…
The river's strangest numbers: 10.90, twice — then 12.70
15 MARCH 1982 · 6 JANUARY 1993 · FEBRUARY 2018
The tie: For twenty-five years, the St. Joseph River's record at South Bend was a tie. Until February 2018, the highest crest ever recorded on the gauge stood at 10.90 feet — and it was reached twice: on 15 March 1982, in the…
The famous grave that moved
1931 – 28 APRIL 2024 · HIGHLAND CEMETERY TO CEDAR GROVE
The move: For ninety-three years the most visited grave in South Bend stood in Highland Cemetery, on Portage Avenue in the city: Knute Rockne's, where six of his own players carried him in April 1931. Its fame was a working…
A world-record attempt, in costume, at the Morris
9 DECEMBER 2025 · THE ATTEMPT, AT ITS DOCUMENTED SIZE
The attempt: On 9 December 2025, the Morris Performing Arts Center — the room Ella Morris sold to the city for one dollar, two entries back in this drawer — hosted an attempt on a world record of a new kind. Scholastic staged a…
Told often, checked in the ledger
THE CLAIMS THIS SECTION DOES NOT RETELL
South Bend's most-repeated oddities are worked in full — telling, teller and record side by side — in the Stories Told and Folklore sections of this history, and are entered here in one line each so this drawer is complete. In…