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What do you consider the key accomplishment(s) of your county's Bicentennial celebration?
What Legacy Project do you most like to tell people about, and why?
Describe a highlight or most memorable moment related to your county's Bicentennial celebration.
How/where are you preserving information and artifacts related to your county's celebration?
Total number of volunteers who participated.
Estimate total attendance.
Estimated dollar amount raised.
Estimated dollar amount spent.
Saint Joseph County was named for the St. Joseph River which flows through it toward Lake Michigan.
East Race Waterway, in South Bend, is the only man-made whitewater raceway in North America.
You can visit other county attractions, including Potawatomi Park Conservatories, where you will experience the lush jungle feel of the Morris Conservatory with its large rubber trees, bamboo and citrus trees and the relaxing sound of the small waterfall surrounded by bougainvillea, bird of paradise and many other exotic plants.
About the storied Notre Dame’s early roots? The University of Notre Dame began late on the bitterly cold afternoon of November 26, 1842, when a 28-year-old French priest, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., and seven companions, all of them members of the recently established Congregation of Holy Cross, took possession of 524 snow-covered acres that the Bishop of Vincennes had given them in the Indiana mission fields.
A man of lively imagination, Father Sorin named his fledgling school in honor of Our Lady, in his native tongue, “L’Université de Notre Dame du Lac” (The University of Our Lady of the Lake). On January 15, 1844, the University was thus officially chartered by the Indiana legislature.
In 1934 Harold Urey, born in Walkerton, Indiana, St. Joseph County, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of deuterium.
At one time Studebaker Company of South Bend was the nation’s largest producer of horse-drawn wagons. It later developed into a multimillion-dollar automobile manufacturer.
County Seat: South Bend
Year Organized: 1830
Square Miles: 457.85