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fin F&M 104=4 OW AAWVW Na 1024 -XIS Me) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet E 1 East Bank Multiple Property Listing Section number Page St. Joseph County, Indiana E.. Statement of Historic Context Industrial Era Development in the East Bank, South Bend, Indiana, 1867 - 1947 The City of South Bend gained fame in the late nineteenth and throughout much of the twentieth century for.its industrial development. Probably the'best known of its factories was the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, who produced first wagons, and then the well-known automobile until the 1960s. other companies with national reputations included the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, Singer Manufacturing and the South Bend Lathe Company. For a.city of its size, South Bend's manufactories were notable. The genesis of this industrial development was, naturally, its location on the St. Joseph River and the available water power it promised. Pre-Historv. Earlv Exploration and Settlement The earliest Europeans to explore northern Indiana were the French, looking for furs and other exportable commodities along water routes. Prior to their ventures in the late 17th Century, the land in the river valleys of the Great Lakes area was populated by.Native- American peoples. (The earliest occupation of the Kankakee and St. Joseph River valleys may date to 10,000-8,000 B.C.) The river systems in the northern Indiana area 'were an active trading and transportation venue for the cultures of the Woodland and Mississippian Traditions (1000 B.C. to A.D. 1600.) By the 1600s, the Algoinquian-speaking peoples called (by the French) the Miamis had moved down to the northern Indiana region from Wisconsin and Illinois. Later moving further south, they were followed by the Potawatomi, who became the most populous native culture in the region. They were encountered by early French travelers like Ren6-Robert Cavalier; Sieur de La Salle who ventured up the St. Joseph River from its effluence at Lake Michigan, to the present site of South Bend. To the south of this site, an ancient portage to the Kankakee offered a practical water route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. ' Although the French established early trading posts in various parts of northern Indiana, development in the territory waned following their defeat in the French and Indian War. The British influence City of South Bend Summary Report, Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Survey. Indianapolis/ South Bend: Indiana DNR, Division of Historic Preservation & Archaeology, 1993, p. 29.