Buchanan and St. Joseph River Railroad - Unissued Railway Stock Certificate

Printer-Goes. Unissued Stock.

Buchanan is a city in Berrien County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 4,456 at the 2010 census. The city is located at the southeast corner of Buchanan Township, about 5 miles (8 km) west of Niles.

The community was named after James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States. Popularly known as "Redbud City" because of the many redbud trees that have historically lined city streets and the major approaches to the city, Buchanan has long been recognized as a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation.

The area, already having been populated by Native Americans in places such as the Moccasin Bluff Site, was first settled in 1833 at the spot where McCoy Creek meets the St. Joseph River. The village of Buchanan was platted in 1842 and incorporated in 1858.

In 1941, as part of the Works Progress Administration arts projects, Gertrude Goodrich painted a mural, Production, in the Buchanan post office. Later painted over, it is in the process of being restored.

On April 12, 1979, farms, houses and mobile homes just north of the city were damaged by an F2 tornado. No lives were lost but several residences sustained significant damage.

The St. Joseph River (known locally as the St. Joe) is a tributary of Lake Michigan with a length of 206 miles (332 km). The river flows in a generally westerly direction through southern Michigan and northern Indiana, United States, to its terminus on the southeast shore of the lake. It drains a primarily rural farming area in the watershed of Lake Michigan. It was enormously important to Native Americans and greatly aided in the colonial exploration, settlement and administration of New France and the nascent United States as a canoe route between Lake Michigan and the watershed of the Mississippi River.

Sakiwäsipi (Outlet River), as it was called by the Miami people, was inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous tribes as it served an essential trade avenue in the Great Lakes region. The most recent indigenous inhabitants of the area were the Miami and Potawatomi peoples. Two different portages allowed nearly continuous travel by canoe among different watersheds of the region. The first major transfer point was at the headwaters in southwestern Michigan, where travelers could make a portage to the St. Joseph River of the Maumee River watershed, which drained into Lake Erie. The second major transfer point was at South Bend, Indiana, where a short portage to the nearby Kankakee River allowed access to the Illinois River and subsequently to the Mississippi. Another major access point along river was at Niles, Michigan, where the Old Sauk Trail, a major east-west Indian trail, crossed the river.

The indigenous trade and navigation networks in the area allowed for extensive trade and movement of people, which allowed early Europeans access to the area in 1675 when Père Jacques Marquette was guided up the Mississippi River via the Illinois River, then to the Kankakee River and portaged to Sakiwasipi and then down to Lake Michigan. On November 1, 1679 René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sailed southeast across Lake Michigan and built Fort Miami at the mouth of the river. La Salle named the river La Rivière des Miamis (River of the Miamis).

At the end of 1679, La Salle followed indigenous trade routes in the opposite direction of that taken by Marquette; heading up the St. Joseph River and portaging to the Kankakee River, getting as far west on the Illinois River as modern-day Peoria, Illinois, before returning to Fort Miami. After giving up on the return of his ship, Le Griffon, in April 1680, he became the first European to walk the well traveled indigenous routes east across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan back to the Detroit River and Canada. The French established Fort St. Joseph at the crossroads of Old Sauk Trail and this well-established east–west trail in 1691.

The watershed was later used as canoe route by early French fur trappers in the Illinois Country. European American settlement of the St. Joseph river basin area began to increase in earnest after southwestern Michigan was surveyed in 1829. From the early 1830s until 1846, the river bore various commodities from upstream to a busy port at St. Joseph, where they were loaded onto lake boats for shipment to Chicago and elsewhere.

On April 11, 1893, a Lake Michigan seiche (a phenomenon similar to an ocean tsunami) pushed a wall of water, 3 to 5 feet (0.91 to 1.52 m) high, up the river at St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. This raised the level of the river by 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 m). The cause of the seiche was unknown, but has been attributed to a sudden squall or change in atmospheric pressure.

Factories located in South Bend because of access to the river and hydro-power created in the East and West Races. The water rights to what would become the East and West Races were claimed by Alexis Coquillard and Lathrop Taylor in 1831, when the city of South Bend was founded. Although the idea of digging a mill race (man-made canal) was put forth in 1835, a dam and the East and West Races were not constructed until 1843. The construction was done by the South Bend Manufacturing Company, incorporated in December 1842 for this very purpose. The South Bend Manufacturing Company thus became owner of the water power rights on the West Race canal, while Samuel L. Cottrell purchased the water rights along the East Race canal.

In 1867 the South Bend Hydraulic Company purchased the rights to the East Race canal for $100. In 1903 the ownership of stock, property rights, and property of the South Bend Manufacturing Company on the West Race canal passed to the Oliver Chilled Plow Works. Over the next two years the Oliver Chilled Plow Works constructed a hydro-electric power plant on the waterway to supply electricity for light, heat, and power to the Oliver Opera House, Oliver Hotel, South Bend factories, and other Oliver buildings.

Other sources of energy and changes in technology resulted in the canals no longer being used for industrial purposes. In the late 1940s the Indiana and Michigan Electric Company purchased the rights along the East Race canal. They began filling it in around 1954 for re-use for other purposes. In 1973 the Oliver Chilled Plow Works hydro-electric plant was demolished to make room for construction of the Century Center, which was completed in 1977. The West Race still exists as a canal North of Jefferson Boulevard and South of Colfax Avenue on the banks of Century Center, between Pier Park and Island Park.

In the early 1980s, the East Race canal was re-excavated. It was converted to a man-made whitewater kayaking course, now known as the East Race Waterway.

In 1984, the abandoned East Race canal in South Bend, whose outlets were both at the river, was converted into the East Race Waterway, North America's first artificial whitewater waterway and the first of four in the United States. Locals first proposed in 1973 that the 19th-century waterway be reopened; construction began in August 1982 and the East Race reopened on June 29, 1984. Through the use of movable barriers and obstacles, the East Race can be configured to provide a whitewater course for recreational and competitive canoeing, kayaking and rafting. In 2021, the East Race was temporarily closed for construction. The City of South Bend is building a hydroelectric dam on the waterway. The project was funded by the University of Notre Dame.

Two sites in the river basin, Moccasin Bluff and Fort St. Joseph, are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Carey Mission, Fort Miami, and Burnett Trading Post are listed as State Registered Historic Sites.

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