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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 full: "On this site South Bend was founded as a fur trading post in 1823 by Alexis Coquillard, who came here from Detroit, Michigan, representing the American Fur Company." The documented ground, carried in the Before the City and Stories Told sections, is Pierre Navarre's post of 1820 at the bend and the townsite cession of 1821. The marker still stands and still says it. The Heritage section prints both the bronze and the record, and harmonizes neither — a city is entitled to its marker, and a history is obliged to its correction, and the two stand on the same corner.
Sources:
- The Heritage section of this history — the 1928 Rotary Club marker, its text quoted whole, and the record's correction standing beside it; the Before the City section — Navarre's post of 1820 and the townsite cession of 1821.