The Bend in the River

Before there was a city, there was a bend. The Saint Joseph River drops down from Michigan, swings sharply to the south, then curves west and north again before continuing toward Lake Michigan. That southernmost arc, where the water makes its widest turn, is where South Bend sits. The name is literal. The town grew up at the south bend of the river.

The site mattered long before European settlers arrived. For the Potawatomi and, before them, the Miami people, this stretch of the Saint Joseph was a critical link in a continental network of waterways. From this bend, a short overland portage of roughly eight miles led to the Kankakee River, and from the Kankakee, canoes could reach the Illinois River and eventually the Mississippi. The Great Lakes basin and the Gulf of Mexico drainage were separated here by a thin strip of Indiana prairie, and the Potawatomi knew exactly what that meant.

French explorers understood it too. In December of sixteen seventy-nine, the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, became the first European documented to stand on the banks of the Saint Joseph near this bend. He was heading overland toward the Mississippi watershed, using the same portage the Potawatomi had used for generations.

By the eighteen twenties, the fur trade had pulled permanent settlers to the spot. Pierre Navarre arrived in eighteen twenty to represent John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, setting up a trading post on the riverbank. Alexis Coquillard followed in eighteen twenty-three and established what he called the Big Saint Joseph Station. The town they anchored took the name South Bend in eighteen thirty, replacing Southold, and was platted as the county seat in eighteen thirty-one.

The river is still here, still making its bend. In the right light, looking down from one of the bridges downtown, you can see why a city grew exactly here and nowhere else.