The New International Encyclopædia/South Bend

SOUTH BEND. The county-seat of Saint Joseph County, Ind., 86 miles east by south of Chicago, Ill.; on the Saint Joseph River, and on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Chicago and Grand Trunk, the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, the Terre Haute and Indiana, and other railroads (Map: Indiana, C 1). Notre Dame, two miles north of the city, is the seat of the University of Notre Dame (q.v.), a Roman Catholic institution opened in 1842, and of Saint Mary's Academy. Saint Joseph's Academy is within the city limits. Noteworthy are the court house, city hall, Oliver Hotel, Epwerp Hospital. Saint Joseph's Hospital, and the Northern Indiana Medical and Surgical Institute. South Bend is the centre of a rich farming section, and is an important industrial city. In the census year 1900 its various industries had an invested capital of $18,156,638 and an output valued at $14,236,331. The Studebaker Wagon Works and the Oliver Plow Works are among the most noted concerns of their kind in the world. There are lumber and flouring mills, foundries and machine shops, wood-turning plants, and manufactories of shirts, sewing machines, agricultural implements, toys, patent medicines, woolens, and paper and wood pulp. The government is vested in a mayor chosen every two years and a unicameral council, and in administrative officials nearly all of whom are appointed by the mayor. The city spends annually for maintenance and operation about $306,000. The water works, which represent an expenditure of $457,974, are owned bv the municipality. Population, in 1890, 21,819; in 1900, 35,999.

The site of South Bend was occupied by the Miami and Potawatami Indians and was a favorite resting place for French traders and explorers. In 1824 Alexis Coquillard established a trading post here; in 1831 a town was laid out, which in 1835 was incorporated; and in 1865 South Bend was chartered as a city.