Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor

 

What's this? We've discovered a new type of National Parks Service (NPS) site: a National Heritage Corridor. What the heck is that? There are already so many national parks, memorials, monuments, national historic sites, national historic parks, national battlefields ... and now national heritage corridors? Not that we're complaining, mind you. It seems there are 49 National Heritage areas, nine of which have the “corridor” designation. Further research indicates that though the NPS plays an advisory role, the national heritage sites are not administered nor funded by the NPS, but rather local governments and private groups are responsible for them. Who knew?

I grew up in this general area and I'm always surprised and embarrassed when I learn how much I don't know about my home turf. How can you grow up in an area and live there for two decades and still know so little about it? Far away places always sound so much more appealing than your own neighborhood. Returning after several years has piqued my interest though, and we decided to find out more about the Blackstone.

The important role of local rivers like the Blackstone in the American industrial revolution always escaped me, yet here was an entire geographic area dedicated to the industry which defined my backyard heritage. It's not that I didn't realize that rivers were harnessed for water power. It's that I didn't realize to what extent they were used and abused and for how long. When we visited the Slater Mill a couple of weeks ago in Pawtucket, we learned Slater had set up his textile mill on the banks of the Blackstone in 1793. It was the first successful factory in the US and thus began the American Industrial Revolution.

As we traveled from town to town, we noticed small signs that read “Ashton – A Mill village”, “Manchaug – A Mill village”, “Lime Rock – A Quarry village”. The village names defined their contribution to society. These were small villages where the mill was the center of industry and the block long, drab brick buildings gobbled up the center of town along the river. The owners controlled all aspects of work. They owned the mill and the company stores and therefore controlled the mill workers as well as the local society. From their mansions overlooking the millworks and the rows of crowded mill houses, owners garnered their profits at the expense of the people who turned out the products and the rivers that powered the mills.

We visited the Captain Kelly House which has been turned into a small Blackstone River transportation museum. Captain Kelly made his money in the China trade and invested in a failing mill which he subsequently made profitable. The Blackstone Canal runs beside the house and an old painting on display showed the use of horses hauling freight up the canal. The museum exhibits trace the uses of the river for transportation as well as water power through its recorded history.

The house, though small, was lovely with gardens and lawns.

The tall chimney of the Ashton Mills, now renovated into luxury condos and lofts, looms in the background.

A 48-mile long river (80km), the Blackstone has been used towards industrial ends for two centuries and was once dubbed “America's hardest working river”. It's been known to be polluted since the turn of the 20th century and yet it was not until the passing of the Clean Water Act of 1972 that any efforts were made to redeem this river from its legacy of filth and pollution. As late as 1990, the US Environmental Protection Agency characterized it as "the most polluted river in the country with respect to toxic sediments." Sad commentary on a once-healthy river that used to supply the native people with their fish and eels.

We continued driving through mill town after mill town. Most all of the old mills are defunct now and, like the Ashton Mill, many have been renovated and refurbed into condos, funky office spaces and shopping malls. The recycling of the old mills make sense instead of building more new buildings. The rivers are slowly being redeemed.

Thoughts of my own heritage came clearly to me ... I'm from a family of mill workers. Another blog ... another day.

Great Road

 

“Travel through three hundred years in three miles.” That's what the brochure touts when it describes Great Road in Lincoln, Rhode Island. Right off the bat, you know there must be something special about the road for people to have named it “Great”.

Construction of one of the earliest colonial roads in the area began in the 1660's and was completed around 1683. This major thoroughfare on the west side of the Blackstone River connected Providence, RI with Mendon, MA, the first English settlement in south central Massachusetts and was extended in the late 18th century to Worcester, MA, county seat and industrial center. Sections of the road followed footpaths used for centuries by Native Americans and it's a stretch of road still traveled today. I'd read about it when we visited Pawtucket, RI a few weeks ago and thought it might be an interesting Sunday getaway, so we packed a lunch and headed to Lincoln.

We nearly whizzed past the Eleazer Arnold House. It sits on the highway (Great Road) with modern houses around it. It's easy to miss, but once we pulled up along side, we were glad we did. Old square nails in the weathered clapboards, a well-used wrought-iron door knocker and small diamond-pattern leaded glass windows left no doubt that this house belonged to another era. Restoration was in progress and scaffolding obscured the west side of the house which was a disappointment since this house is considered a fine extant example of a “stone-ender”, where the entire end of the house is dedicated to a massive stone chimney.

We passed by several other older buildings, many in disrepair, like the old Moffett Mill, strategically situated on the banks of the Moshassuck River which provided power for this early 19th century machine shop. There was no place to stop along this narrow stretch of road, but I nicked a picture off the web so you could see it.

We continued on to find the gem of the day … the Hannaway Blacksmith Shop. William Hannaway operated a blacksmith shop in this building from the late 19th century until the 1920's.

There was a smithy at work (Ed) and a young apprentice (Sam), giving demonstrations.

This was right up David's alley and he listened raptly as Ed explained the history and basics of blacksmithing.

Hearthside (1810-11) was dubbed “the house that love built”. The story goes that a young gentlemen won a large sum of money in a lottery and decided to build a house to woo a young woman of whom he was very fond. He built the mansion and showed it to her, hoping for some positive reinforcement on the relationship. She remarked it was beautiful, but no one in their right mind would ever consider living way out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, that dashed his hopes. He didn't propose, he never married and he never lived in the house.

We thought it was a beauty with a distinctive ogee gable on the side elevations and rose windows.

The Valentine Whitman house (c. 1694) took us back to the colonial period and provided a good view and example of a stone-ender after all. Huge, locally quarried granite slabs were used as the front steps to the entrance. Electrical wires and a meter provided evidence of modern day amenities which kind of spoiled the allure. Now located in a neighborhood, this house and the others we saw were once totally isolated and miles from their nearest neighbors and the town.

I guess living on the outskirts of civilization is sort of like being at sea or in a remote anchorage for weeks on end, having to rely on ourselves and our (limited) wits to get along. We do, however, get to decide when we want to be isolated and when we'd rather be close to a well-stocked supermarket.

So, was the Great Road great? In our humble opinions, it was just moderately good, but of course, we had lots of other roads from which to choose.

Stay tuned for our further adventures in the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor.

On finding Mr. Potato Head...and other cool stuff in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

 

Four hours free to amuse ourselves. We headed across the Rhode Island border to Pawtucket. Why visit Rhode Island's fourth largest city ... industrial, non-exciting Pawtucket, you ask? First, it was really close (16 miles/19 minutes) and therefore accessible. The more I researched, the more interesting things sounded. Plus we'd already committed to breakfast at the Modern Diner. We were there, why not discover what else was hidden in the area. As it turns out, quite a bit.

A city of about 71,000 people, Pawtucket's Native American name translates to “river fall”. There are three rivers here, the mighty Blackstone (not really mighty, but hey), the Moshassuck and the Ten Mile and several waterfalls along their paths. All that water power made Pawtucket a choice spot for industry, specifically the textile industry.

Huge mills, many renovated and revitalized, preside over downtown city blocks. Nearby old three-deckers, multi-storied apartment houses, provided homes for the factory workers. Slater Mill built in 1793, now a museum and National Historic Site, sits on the Blackstone Falls. It was the first fully mechanized cotton-spinning mill in America, a reminder of Rhode Island's premiere place in the American Industrial Revolution.

With a baseball history dating back to 1892, Pawtucket is also home to the Pawtucket Red Sox, locally known as the PawSox, a AAA farm team to the Boston Red Sox. The longest professional baseball game in history, 33 innings, was played at McCoy Stadium in 1981. The PawSox weren't playing today, but we drove around the small stadium and thought it might be fun to catch a game sometime later in the summer.

Slater Memorial Park was quite the surprise. It's lush, green and spacious on the outskirts of the city. Little League baseball games were in progress. Paddleboats, their occupants pedaling madly away, dotted the small pond.

Canadian geese had taken up residence at one end of the pond and honked away in blissful contentment. The piece de resistance, however, was the Looff Carousel.

Built in 1895 by Charles I.D. Looff, the Looff carousel has been operating in Slater Park since 1910. It sports 44 standing horses and some menagerie animals including a lion, giraffe and camel. There are also some dogs and griffins … not sure how they fit into the mix. David bought me a 25-cent ticket and I picked a good-looking steed for my 3-minute spin. The horses don't go up and down and there was no brass ring to catch, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Ah, yes, and Mr. Potato Head, the lead-in topic in today's title. Hasbro, one of the world's largest toy makers, is headquartered in Pawtucket. Outside their corporate offices stands a very large, colorful, quite handsome Mr. Potato Head. Born in 1952, Mr. Head was the first child's toy ever advertised on television and was an immediate smash hit. I had one except the early ones provided face parts that were stuck into various veggies like potatoes and carrots, to make veggie characters. Mom would collect them when I was done playing and toss them in the stew pot. No waste in our house. Nowadays, they provide a plastic potato. What's the fun in that?

By the way, a little Mr. Potato Head trivia - In 1985, Mr. Potato Head received four votes in Boise, Idaho mayoral race. This became the world record in the "most votes for Mr. Potato Head in a political campaign" category as verified by Guinness Book of World Records.

So the motto of this blog post … Obscure, cool, quirky stuff is pretty much everywhere … you just have to look for it ...even in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.