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Population · the counts, the doubling, and the long plateau
Three geographies share this section and are never merged: the town of Walkerton, an incorporated place of 1.899 square miles; Lincoln Township, the civil township of 22.2 square miles that contains it; and the ground outside the town but inside the township, which this section counts as the remainder where the series allows. Walkerton's population story is unusually legible for a small town: four decades of near-perfect stillness around one thousand, a wartime doubling in a single decade, a half-century plateau around two thousand, a peak in 2000 that rides partly on an enlarged boundary, and a gentle two-census decline since. Every figure below is a decennial count on the basis stated; estimates are printed as estimates, in their own article, and never enter the series.
The town series, 1880–2020
EVERY DECENNIAL COUNT, DATED TO ITS INSTRUMENT
The town's first returned count is 1880's, three years after incorporation, and the series runs unbroken to 2020. 1880: 754 — and 1890: 885 — carried here on the Story of Walkerton section's citation of the published decennial…
The township series, 1890–2020, and the remainder
LINCOLN TOWNSHIP ON THE STATE COMPILATION, CROSS-VERIFIED
Lincoln Township counted 1,648 people in 1890 and 2,859 in 2020, and its series is the town's story with the farm country left in. The figures, from the Indiana Business Research Center's township compilation (STATS Indiana…
The doubling, 1940–1950: the Kingsbury decade
THE SERIES' HINGE, WITH ITS CAUSE AS THE RECORD STATES IT
Between 1940 and 1950 the town grew by 78.4 percent — 1,178 people became 2,102 — and the township grew with it, 1,791 to 2,770. No other decade in either series moves like it. The cause stands in the record at two strengths. The…
The peak, the plateau, and the boundary warning
2000'S 2,274 READ WITH ITS BOUNDARY, NOT AGAINST IT
The town's largest count, 2,274 in 2000, is also its least comparable — and the record says why. The 1990 comparative table gives the town's land area as 1.5 square miles in the 1990 boundary; the 2020 Gazetteer gives 1.899.…
Housing: the units series the comparative table carries
HOUSING UNITS, 1970–1990, AND THE 2020 PROFILE
The 1990 comparative table carries the town's housing alongside its people, and the two series together date the plateau's building. CPH-2-16, Table 5 gives the town 681 housing units in 1970, 802 in 1980, and 808 in 1990 — the…
Composition: the counts the files carry, 2000–2020
FROM THE PL 94-171 FILES, CELL-LEVEL, THREE CENSUSES
The redistricting files, parsed directly, give the town's composition in the census's own categories. In 2020 the town's 2,096 people were: White alone 1,899 (90.6 percent); two or more races 121; some other race alone 34; Black…
The present-day snapshot: ACS 2020–2024
ESTIMATES, DATED, WITH THEIR MARGINS — NEVER MERGED
The American Community Survey's 2020–2024 five-year estimates, read from the Bureau's table-based summary files, describe the town between censuses — as estimates, with margins of error at the ninety-percent level. The survey's…
The frame: county and metro, stated precisely
WALKERTON IN ITS TWO LARGER GEOGRAPHIES
Walkerton is a small town inside a mid-sized urban county, and the two facts must not be traded for each other. St. Joseph County counted 272,912 people in 2020 (the PL file, reproduced cell-for-cell), up from 266,931 in 2010 and…
Population Records: Open Questions
THE NAMED GAPS, WITH THEIR SETTLERS
Three cells of the town series and two of the township's ride below first-hand strength, and this article names them rather than letting the tables imply otherwise. The town's 1880 (754), 1890 (885), and 1960 (2,044) counts are…
Prophets scored: the boosters overshot, the state projects stagnation, and nobody projects the town
AUDIT ROW #385 · IBRC COUNTY VINTAGES 2018 AND 2024, READ THIS PASS · SCORED AGAINST THE CENSUSES
The forecast record for this ground divides into a booster who guessed high, an official series that projects the county only, and a town level at which no official forecast has ever existed — and the scoring begins with that…