A Bend in Time

Episode 5: Red Salmon

At 6'3" and 230 pounds, Red Salmon was practically a giant at the turn of the century — the first player Notre Dame ever placed on Walter Camp's All-America team, and the holder of a school touchdown record that would stand for more than eighty years. Meet Notre Dame's first real superstar and relive a 1903 season that gave up zero points across an entire year.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

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

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund. 

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 4: The Kangaroo Kicker

Pat O'Dea came to America from Australia to go to school and instead became the most famous football player in the western half of the country — a kicker so far beyond anyone else that newspapers wrote about his leg as if it had been kissed by God. In 1899, Notre Dame hired him to coach, and for two seasons the Kangaroo Kicker gave them a claimed regional championship and the best record in program history — before getting himself fired in the strangest way one of Notre Dame's coaches ever managed.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

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

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund. 

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 3: Frank Hering

In 1896, a 22-year-old showed up at Notre Dame to captain the team, play quarterback, and coach it — all at once — and the university paid him in cuts of beef. Frank Hering took a school that played football sometimes and gave it schedules, standards, and a season that happened every year whether anyone organized it or not — which is why they'd one day call him the grandfather of Notre Dame football.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

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

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund. 

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 2: The In-Between Years

After winning their first game against another college in 1889, Notre Dame football simply vanished — two full seasons with no opponents, no scores, no line of type in any newspaper, and no record of anyone deciding it should be that way. This is the story of the students who wouldn't let it die: a grieving younger brother rebuilding a team that didn't exist, and two undefeated Purdue champions who wandered back to South Bend and started coaching — and playing — for a school they never actually attended.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

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

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund. 

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Episode 1: The Game They Didn't Know How to Play

In November 1887, the University of Michigan came to South Bend to play Notre Dame's first-ever football game — except Notre Dame didn't know how to play. The students had tried learning the sport from a rulebook, and it had not gone well, so the visitors spent the morning teaching it before anyone bothered to keep score. What they finally played lasted less than half a game and ended 8-0, but the record books still count it as the first meeting in one of college football's great rivalries.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

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

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund. 

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

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