Episode 8: Coquillard's Folly

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 7: The Trail of Death

As the region's new settlements grew, the desire for land grew with it. The land, however, was already occupied. Most of the area's native peoples were coerced, threatened, and then mandated at gunpoint to give up their homelands and move west. This episode traces the forced removal of Chief Menominee's band from Twin Lakes in 1838, the 660-mile march that killed at least 42 people, and the far murkier story of Alexis Coquillard's own role in completing the removals.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 6: Coquillard's Folly

Canal Fever swept the nation after the Erie Canal turned Buffalo mud into New York gold, and Alexis Coquillard caught it bad. With the fur trade dead and mill-powered boomtowns like Lowell and Rochester as his model, South Bend's founder staked his fortune on a four-mile mill race meant to divert the Kankakee into the St. Joseph and turn South Bend into an industrial powerhouse. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 5: The First Census

By 1831, South Bend is a real town of about 163 people, and this episode goes door to door to meet them: the innkeeper who built the courthouse, the man whose brick house made him "Frederick the Great," a keelboat captain who kept the town supplied before the railroads came, a young newspaperman who'd go on to run the U.S. Government Printing Office, a self-taught doctor who arrived knowing every soul in town, and eight Methodists who founded a church in the back of a Catholic tavern.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 4: Southold

Follow Coquillard and Taylor from fur traders to town-builders: the swamp that rerouted Michigan Road straight through South Bend, the baffling choice of "Southold" for the new post office, the platted streets that still exist today, and the three-thousand-dollar bond that stole the county seat away from a town that existed only on paper. By the end of it, the South Bend finally has the name it’s going to keep.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 3: Fur Traders

Alexis Coquillard takes over Pierre Navarre's post in 1823, and a young rival, Lathrop Miner Taylor, arrives four years later. Learn how John Jacob Astor built America's first great monopoly by crushing foreign competitors and government trading posts alike, and how his agents in South Bend turned the portage into a two-sided hustle: shipping furs upstream to keep their bosses happy, while quietly buying cheap and selling dear to every traveler passing through.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 2: Indiana

South Bend almost wasn't Indiana at all. When the Northwest Ordinance drew the territory's northern boundary, the future river bend sat squarely inside Michigan Territory — until an 1816 statehood petition, driven by Indiana's fear of being landlocked, pushed the border ten miles further north and swept the portage in almost as an afterthought.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 1: The Portage

Twelve thousand years before Pierre Navarre built his cabin on the St. Joseph River, retreating glaciers carved a three-to-five-mile gap between two of the continent's great watersheds — and set South Bend's entire history in motion. In this episode, we trace the story of the St. Joseph-Kankakee portage from the last Ice Age through the arrival of French explorer Robert de LaSalle, the 1681 council beneath the Council Oak, and the fur traders who finally cashed in on one of North America's most valuable pieces of real estate.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org