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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 cargo keelboat, the Antelope, eighty feet on the keel, built in the street in front of Johnson's shop. To launch her, Johnson built a corduroy road through the swamp, and the boat was dragged to the water by "the whole male population." Knoblock's navigation history, written from the boat-builder's own family, notes the consequence in one line: the dragging of the Antelope was the first attempt to grade what is now East Washington Street. The street's first improvement was a keelboat's passage, on logs, hauled by every man in town.
Sources:
- The Rivers section of this history — Otto M. Knoblock, Early Navigation on the St. Joseph River, Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1925): the Fairplay of 1831, the Antelope built in the street, the corduroy road, "the whole male population," and the first grading of East Washington Street.