The dam and the races

1831 — 1845

South Bend's industries were born of falling water: The river at the bend drops as it turns, and the town's founders saw the mill seat in it at once. In 1831 Coquillard and Taylor claimed the river's water rights on both banks — the future West Race on their side of the island divide and the East Race across it. The mill-race idea was put forth in 1835: a dam above the bend, and canals — races — dug along both channels to carry the water past mill wheels and let it fall. It took a corporation to do it. The South Bend Manufacturing Company was incorporated in December 1842 and built the dam; work began in earnest in 1843, the dam was completed in 1844, and by 1845 both races were operating — the company holding the west half of the power, Samuel L. Cottrell the east half, which passed in time to the South Bend Hydraulic Company. Gristmills and sawmills came first on the races, then woolen mills, iron works, paper and furniture: the races fixed the geography of the industrial city, a working riverfront of mills and, in the next decade, factories strung along both canals.

The races outlived their century, and their afterlife belongs to this record because the city keeps rebuilding on them. In 1867 the Hydraulic Company bought the East Race rights for $100; in 1903 the West Race property passed to the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, which raised a hydroelectric plant on it within two years. The East Race was bought by the Indiana & Michigan Electric Company in the late 1940s and being filled in by about 1954; the Oliver power plant was demolished in 1973 for Century Center, completed in 1977 on the riverfront, while the West Race survives as the canal beside it. And in 1984 the city dug the East Race out again and opened it as the East Race Waterway — billed, on its opening, as North America's first artificial whitewater course, a kayak run through downtown where the mill wheels had been. The last chapter of the races so far came in 2021, when the waterway closed for a season while the city built a hydroelectric dam on it, a project funded by the University of Notre Dame: the river at the bend, making power again.

Sources:

1. National Park Service, East Bank Village National Register documentation (Bobrick/Zimmerman) — the 1831 water-rights claim, the 1835 race plan, the South Bend Manufacturing Company's December 1842 incorporation, the dam of 1843–44 and both races operating by 1845, and the races' later owners.
2. "The Rivers" reference history of the St. Joseph at South Bend — the Hydraulic Company's 1867 purchase of the East Race rights, Oliver's 1903 West Race acquisition and power plant, the filling of the East Race under Indiana & Michigan Electric, the 1973 demolition for Century Center, the 1984 waterway, and the 2021 hydroelectric project funded by the University of Notre Dame.
3. City of South Bend — the East Race Waterway's 1984 opening and its billing as the first artificial whitewater waterway in North America.