Blackstone River Valley: where the American Industrial Revolution began

Samuel Slater opened his mill on the Blackstone River in 1793, and the mill buildings still stand beside the river. Along the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, you can see the first mills of the American Industrial Revolution.

Slater Mill in Pawtucket, RI, which used the Blackstone River to power the first cotton spinning mill in the United States. National Heritage Areas Program.

The river and the mills

Most sites lie on the banks of the Blackstone River, which runs from Worcester, MA to the Seekonk River north of Providence, RI, on Nipmuc and Narragansett tribal lands. Surviving mill villages include Slatersville in Rhode Island, and Hopedale and Whitinsville in south-central Massachusetts. Park Ranger Mark Mello says the region's national significance is undeniable as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America, and links today's clothes, phones, labor systems and social issues to what happened here in the eighteenth century, from textiles to tech to trade unions.

The Blackstone River, headwaters of the Industrial Revolution, at Blackstone River Gorge in south-central Massachusetts. National Heritage Areas Program.

Slater Mill, built by Samuel Slater. National Heritage Areas Program.

Slatersville Mill. National Heritage Areas Program.

Heritage corridor and national park

Congress designated the Heritage Corridor in 1986. Museums and visitor centers across it cover different themes: the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, RI, tells of French-Canadian immigrants who left Quebec to work in the mills; River Bend Farm Visitor Center is in Uxbridge, MA; and the Blackstone Valley Heritage Center is in Pawtucket, RI, near Slater Mill.

The Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park grew from a National Park Service study of the corridor's resources, and Congress made it a unit of the Park Service in December 2014. It tells the story of industry in the nation's first heavily industrialized region, and includes sites such as Blackstone River State Park in Lincoln, RI, home to the Captain Wilbur Kelley House Transportation Museum.

Slater Mill

The Slater Mill National Historic Site in Pawtucket holds the 1793 mill, which housed the machine for cotton spinning that Slater, an immigrant from England, built using what he had learned from the English inventor and industrialist Jedediah Strutt. The site also has the Wilkinson Mill (1810) and the Sylvanus Brown House (c. 1758). NPS recently acquired all three buildings and the section of the Blackstone's western bank where they stand.

Sylvanus Brown House, c. 1758. National Heritage Areas Program.

Samuel Slater (left) and a diagram of a water-powered mill. National Park Service.

Wilkinson Mill (1810) at Slater Mill National Historic Site. National Heritage Areas Program.

Supervisory Ranger Kevin Klyberg, who worked at the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor for 18 years before joining NPS, values that the corridor's sites are open and lived in, not roped off; at places like Hopedale, Manchaug and Worcester's Green Island, mill villages can still be seen. Mello describes the mills as a sensory way to meet history: the smell of machinery and oil in the wood, the sightlines, the light, and the feel of the river's power. Park staff were getting the Wilkinson Mill's water wheel running so that visitors could see it work.

Beyond history

The corridor also offers recreation, especially cycling. The Blackstone River Bikeway, part of a network along the Blackstone River Greenway, reaches Lincoln, RI, and the network is meant to link into a 48-mile trail from the Blackstone River Valley Heritage Center in Worcester, MA (opened 2018) to Providence, RI, connecting New England's second- and third-largest cities. It will be part of the East Coast Greenway, which runs from Florida to Maine. Other corridor sites include Roger Williams National Memorial in Rhode Island and affiliates such as the Worcester Historical Society and Brood Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Heritage Areas Program, "Blackstone River Valley, Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution", https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/brvnhc_winter_2021.htm; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Notices of a past lecture series and of pandemic-era closures are left out.