CHAPTER TWO :

Historical Overview

and Resource Description

Historical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Cultural Resource Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Visitor Resource Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Socioeconomic Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 21

Historical Overview of the 

Blackstone River Valley’s 

Industrial Development

In the early 17th century, the Blackstone River Valley 

was claimed by Native Americans of three principal tribal 

groups: the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Nipmuc. They lived in semi-permanent villages, moving periodically in search of more fertile soil. The Native Americans developed a major trail along the Blackstone River’s 

length and a number of minor trails throughout the valley, 

which were used and developed into roads by later settlers. 

The arrival of early explorers, fi shermen, and fur traders 

severely disrupted this pattern of life, and infectious diseases carried by the Europeans virtually wiped out much of 

the Native American population by the 1630s.

Attracted by religious freedom and rich and abundant 

resources, Europeans settled the region beginning in the 

mid to late 17th century. In 1675 local Native Americans, 

roused to desperation by repeated incursions into their 

ancestral territories by European settlers, rose in concert 

under the Wampanoag leader, Metacomet (also known as 

King Philip) to defend their lands and way of life. During 

the confl ict, nearly every European settlement in the valley 

was destroyed, but the war was equally devastating to the 

Native American communities. The war ended in 1677 and 

reconstruction of colonial villages commenced fi rst in the 

southern portion on the Valley and later in the north. The 

region remained largely agricultural through the 18th century, though urban centers like Worcester and Providence 

began to emerge as market and fi nancial centers.

During the 19th century the United States underwent 

fundamental changes that transformed the country from 

a predominantly agrarian society in which manufacturing 

(where it existed at all) had scarcely progressed beyond the 

handicraft level, into the world’s leading industrial power. 

Industrialization took place fi rst and primarily in the textile 

industry and this sector remained in the forefront of industrialization into the mid-20th century.9

 The profound transformation that industrialization brought fi rst emerged and 

succeeded in the Blackstone River Valley of Rhode Island 

and Massachusetts, where its effects were long-lasting and 

its physical evidence remains clearly visible today. The success of Samuel Slater (1768-1835) as an American pioneer, 

applying new industrial technologies in Pawtucket, RI, 

9 “For all intents and purposes the so-called ‘industrial revolution’ of the late 

18th and early 19th centuries was a revolution in textile production.” (Walter Licht, 

Industrializing America: the 19th Century [Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995], 25.)

was monitored by Alexander Hamilton, then the nation’s 

newly appointed fi rst Secretary of the Treasury. As Slater’s 

early operation evolved, Hamilton explored the potential of 

bringing the private and public sectors together to advance 

the nation’s industrial development through the creation of 

the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.). 

In 1792, S.U.M. acquired 700 acres of land on the Great 

Falls in Paterson, New Jersey and with signifi cant capital 

sought to undertake the development of a major planned 

industrial center, where the fi rst water-powered mill came 

on line in 1794. While Paterson’s industrial development 

lagged in those early years, the Rhode Island System of 

manufacture pioneered by Slater continued to grow and 

thrive.

A number of serendipitous geographical factors converged to make the compact region of the Blackstone 

River Valley into America’s fi rst center of industrialization. 

Wealthy merchant families in Providence, Rhode Island, 

had accumulated surplus capital from the transatlantic 

trade and were looking for opportunities to invest. Taking 

advantage of the city’s excellent port, they had developed 

a network of profi table commercial connections. The hinterland was largely agricultural and generated a surplus of 

labor, primarily women and children who possessed domestic handicraft skills but had not previously been part of 

the labor market. Many men were skilled tinkerers, familiar with mechanical processes and receptive to labor-saving 

methods. Perhaps most important, the Blackstone River 

and its tributaries offered many sites that were suitable for 

water-powered mills.

Although the core technologies of this transformation 

were imported (some would say stolen) from Britain, their 

applications in the Blackstone Valley were distinctly American. The Blackstone Valley continued to be a signifi cant 

center of manufacturing throughout America’s industrial 

age, and features that made it distinctive remain visible in 

its buildings, communities, and landscapes.

Capital, labor, and energy were already in place in the 

Blackstone Valley when Samuel Slater introduced the technological and organizational components that had been 

missing in earlier unsuccessful attempts to mechanize textile production in the U.S. By 1790, English inventors had 

developed a wide range of machines and processes that gave 

their country an enormous competitive advantage. Slater, 

arriving in the U.S. in 1789, brought working knowledge of 
22 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

Richard Arkwright’s machinery for spinning cotton yarn10

and in doing so circumvented British laws against taking 

technology out of the country. Soon he connected with 

Moses Brown, a civic-minded and intellectual merchant of 

Providence, whose previous efforts to launch cotton manufacture had enjoyed only limited success. Over the next two 

or three years, assisted by skilled local mechanics, Slater 

perfected the manufacturing process. These advances were 

embodied in a new mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, whose 

construction he supervised in 1792-93.

Together, these elements reached critical mass generating an outburst of industrial growth that seems revolutionary because of its speed. Textile manufacturing grew slowly 

in the early 1790s, even after Slater’s successful demonstrations, but took off in the new century. Nascent American 

industry took advantage of turmoil in Europe, especially 

after Jefferson’s embargo of 1807 blocked textile imports 

from Britain. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin’s census 

of manufactures found 40 cotton mills operating within 30 

miles of Providence in 1809, and these accounted for about 

two-thirds of the active spindles in New England. After a 

period of explosive growth, another report by the Secretary 

of the Treasury counted 119 mills in Rhode Island alone in 

1832.11 By then, the Blackstone had earned a reputation as 

America’s “hardest-working river.”12

Samuel Slater found conditions in the Blackstone Valley 

congenial and was able to transplant not only the Arkwright 

process but much of the physical and social organization 

of the English factory villages he remembered. New mill 

villages, many started by Slater, his associates, or men he 

trained, sprouted up at sites that were previously unsettled, 

or at most contained proto-industrial grist or saw mills. 

These “mills in the countryside” were a defi ning feature of 

the Slater System (also referred to as the Rhode Island System of manufacture) and made it appear less threatening to 

Americans who had heard enough of English industrialization to dread the smoky, congested horrors of Manchester’s 

“Satanic Mills.”

In the early Republic, many Americans believed that the 

nation’s future should be agrarian and feared that Englishstyle industry would create hellish living conditions, destroy individual independence, and threaten the democratic 

10 Cotton was amenable to handling by machine. Irregular wool, worsted, and 

linen fi bers were far more resistant to mechanization, and industrialization of those 

segments of the textile trade lagged by one or two decades.

11 Caroline F. Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture (Houghton 

Miffl in, 1931), 24, 35, 155.

12 Winthrop Packard, “America’s Hardest Working River,” Technical World Magazine. Vol. 12, Number 2. October 1909.

ideal of relative social equality. The mill villages and their 

small factories, employing familiar vernacular architecture, blended into their surroundings in a way that soothed 

such societal fears.

The manufacturing operations of the United States 

[in 1832] are carried on in little villages or hamlets, 

which often appear to spring up as if by magic in the 

bosom of some forest, around the water-fall which 

serves to turn the mill wheel... God forbid... that 

there ever may arise a counterpart of Manchester in 

the New World.13

Another factor that made industrialization acceptable 

was that the fi rst generation of textile mills used power 

only for spinning. Weaving was not easily mechanized and 

remained a handcraft “putting out” operation, in which 

households near a mill could be profi tably engaged without excessive disruption of their lifestyles. This assured a 

continuation of established practice, in which rural families 

were accustomed to using carding, fulling, and fi nishing 

mills in conjunction with home looms. Power loom weaving, introduced in the 1820s, was for many years confi ned 

to simple, sturdy fabrics. Handloom weaving of fi ne and 

specialized fabrics thrived in home outwork and small 

shops through the fi rst half of the 19th century. In that 

sense, mechanization of textile production was a step-wise 

change, not a wholesale disruption of traditional arrangements.

Although individually owned and operated, the mill villages formed a dense network, linked by physical resemblances, similarities of process, and a multitude of close 

alliances among the owners. The result was the formation 

of a sprawling but cohesive industrial district that covered 

the watershed of the Blackstone River and soon extended 

beyond it. Money and technical expertise permeated political boundaries and expanded the district’s physical and 

economic features into the nearby Woonasquatucket and 

Pawtuxet River Valleys of Rhode Island and the Quinebaug 

River Valley of eastern Connecticut and adjoining Massachusetts. So attractive was this “colony” that more textile 

mills were built in eastern Connecticut in the 1820s than in 

Rhode Island, though suitable sites were still available in 

the Blackstone Valley. In the opposite direction, the textile 

industry organized on the Rhode Island System spread into 

southeastern Massachusetts to Taunton and beyond. Before 

long, this form of industrial organization was transferred to 

13 Zachariah Allen, The Practical Tourist (1832), as quoted in Gary Kulik, Roger Parks, and Theodore Z. Penn, eds., The New England Mill Village, 1790-1860. 

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982), 7.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 23

“outliers” much farther afi eld. In his study on industrialization, historian Walter Licht summarizes the trend: “Numerous circumstances could force the disintegration of the incorporated mill village, yet the form prevailed, spread, and 

persisted. From the northern wilderness of Maine to the 

hamlet of Rockdale in southeastern Pennsylvania, along 

creeks and narrow rivers, sprang up hundreds of mill communities during the fi rst half of the nineteenth century.”14

In essence, the mill villages were planned communities, since they were initially constructed in a short span of 

time where there had been little or no previous settlement. 

This meant that in most cases the mill owners had to provide housing and community buildings in addition to their 

factories. The resulting assemblage of structures refl ected 

their ideas of thrift, order, and social hierarchy. Slatersville, 

Rhode Island, developed at Samuel Slater’s behest largely 

by his brother John in 1807, is a prototype not only of the 

planned mill village but the “company town ” as well. Most 

of the features that defi ned the later company towns were 

already in place, with the possible exception that it and 

other Rhode Island examples were not set off into separate political entities.15 However, even this qualifi cation is 

far from absolute: sometimes industrial villages split off to 

form new municipalities, and in many cases the power of 

the mill owners was suffi cient to direct the political process 

of existing towns.16

Samuel Slater remained a traditionalist in social matters. 

Thus, the industrial labor system he introduced, commonly 

termed “full-family employment” and largely replicated 

from his English experience, was essentially paternalistic.17

In dealing with the family as a unit, Slater consciously reinforced fi rm paternal rule within the nuclear family, which 

he considered to be the natural order. Under this system, 

mill owners not only felt some degree of responsibility for 

their employees but were also able to exercise broad control 

over the lives of their workers. In implementing this system 

of management, Slater and his followers frequently provided schools, churches, and stores in their villages. Company 

stores both fi lled a need in isolated villages and provided 

another avenue of control. Having little negotiating lever14 Industrializing America, 24.

15 “I think the Blackstone’s communities fi t into most defi nitions of company 

towns. John Garner, for instance, defi ned a company town as one constructed, supervised, and owned by a single business enterprise. But ‘mill village’ is the term preferred locally and it also characterizes these communities adequately.”(Alison Kim 

Hoagland, “Report on Site Visit, Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study, 

Feb. 14-16, 2008,” www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm, 3.

16 The traditional New England town is the functional equivalent of townships in 

other parts of the country.

17 This is discussed more fully by Barbara M. Tucker, Samuel Slater and the 

Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860 (Cornell Univ., 1984).

age, employees who were unhappy with any aspect of life 

in the mill village had little choice but to leave the community. Paternalistic attitudes endured and became broader in 

scope at Hopedale and Whitinsville, Massachusetts.

Slater seldom allowed the benign features of paternalism to interfere with profi t. Although he had been an apprentice, he adopted a system of wages rather than apprenticeship. The rise of the mill village and its labor system 

redefi ned the role of women and children by involving 

them in the wage economy, but it also had a broad impact 

on the position of men. The mills offered men employment 

compatible with their self-esteem as mechanics, supervisors or farmers and thereby strengthened their position of 

authority within the family. This may well have been a consideration in Slater’s practice of establishing farms in association with his mill villages and allowing private gardens 

to fl ourish. Slater-style villages were confi gured to allow 

space for family gardens and livestock.

The popular construct of farm to factory is oversimplifi ed and misleading. More accurately, the process was farm 

and factory. Industrialization displaced agriculture only in 

relative terms, as a sector of the overall economy.18 In absolute terms, agriculture expanded to feed the growing populations of mill villages. Thus, the farms and factories were 

interdependent and mutually supportive. This is one of the 

factors that caused the mills to be welcomed as a positive 

economic benefi t by the rural population. People who had 

been deeply shaken by the outfl ow of New England’s sons 

and daughters welcomed the employment provided by the 

factories and the reinvigoration of the farms. In response 

to the changing economic climate, many farms made the 

move from subsistence to market farming, producing dairy 

products, fruits, and vegetables for local sale.

In its initial decades, industrialization was largely synonymous with the cotton textile industry. This business was 

important not only for its direct impacts, but for its role in 

stimulating other forms of industrial activity. Among these 

is the chemical industry, through its role in furnishing dyes 

for cotton fabrics. More signifi cant was the machine tool 

industry, which expanded rapidly to fi ll the needs of the 

textile factories. The Blackstone Valley emerged as a critical node for developing and disseminating advances in the 

manufacture of machine tools and machinery, and this expanding capability had widespread consequences in all as18 David R. Meyer, “Report: Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study,” 

www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm, 2008, p.2; Claire W. 

Dempsey and Myron O. Stachiw, “The Late Industrial Period in the Blackstone Valley: Industry, Agriculture and a Changing Population,” (report for Blackstone Valley 

National Heritage Corridor, n.d.)
24 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

pects of life. A busy network of inventive mechanics gathered, exchanged news of new machines and techniques, and 

spread them to outlying areas where the textile industry had 

taken hold. The Wilkinson family, related to Samuel Slater 

by marriage, provides a conspicuous example of those who 

engaged in this network. David Meyer, author of a recent 

study of the subject, concludes that the Blackstone Valley 

“constituted one of the leading machine shop, machinery 

and machine tool complexes in the nation.”19 Worcester and 

Providence remained centers of machine and precision tool 

manufacturing through World War II. In many ways, their 

tool builders refl ected the fl exibility and adaptability of the 

region’s textile manufacturers.

The infl uence of the textile mills and the wealth they generated was felt in other ways, particularly by the transportation infrastructure. Mill owners in Rhode Island promoted 

turnpikes such as the one connecting Providence and Pawtucket. More importantly, they constructed the Blackstone 

Canal, a transportation artery extending from the port of 

Providence nearly the entire length of the Blackstone River 

to the inland town of Worcester, thereby shaping the Valley 

into a cohesive entity and stimulating the development of 

Worcester as an important urban manufacturing center.20

As their wealth increased, mill owners gave architectural 

expression to their power and prestige in the magnifi cent 

homes, libraries, municipal buildings, churches and parks 

that still embellish the region and bear their names.

Slater’s achievements in the Blackstone Valley demonstrated that textile manufacture could be successful and 

profi table in the U.S., at least under a favorable tariff regime. Once this critical point had been confi rmed, others 

began to experiment with alternative models. The transformation that made the U.S. into a mighty industrial power 

was so sweeping and dramatic that it was popularly enshrined as the “Industrial Revolution.” American scholars 

have abandoned this term as too restrictive in both time 

and process, replacing it with the more comprehensive con19 “Report: Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study,” www.nps.gov/

blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm, 2008, p.6. For a fuller development, see 

Meyer’s Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America 

(Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006).

20 The Middlesex Canal linked the area that became Lowell with the port of 

Boston before Lowell was developed, but Lowell is best known for its system of 

power canals. Nothing as elaborate as these power canals existed in the Blackstone 

Valley, nor was necessary due to the region’s geography; and this is one of the vital 

differences between the two manufacturing systems.

struct “industrialization.”21 The richer understanding of the 

industrial phenomenon that has emerged since the initial 

surge in scholarly interest in the 1970s shows that it occurred over an extended period, at several locations, and in 

a variety of forms.

Although industrialization reshaped all aspects of American life, it did not follow a uniform process. The Blackstone Valley exemplifi es one of several main paths to industrialization. This distinctive form was so closely associated 

with the area where it originated that it became known as 

the Rhode Island System of manufacture. In general, the 

Rhode Island System was characterized by its relatively 

small-scale mills, ownership by individuals or partnerships 

rather than corporations, use of families as the labor force, 

location in multiple detached villages in a rural setting, and 

a symbiotic relationship with agriculture. It represents the 

fi rst successful application of the factory system of manufacturing in the U.S., employing machines driven by a central power source and tended by semi-skilled workers.

The major alternative system in textile manufacture 

was pioneered at Waltham, Massachusetts, but it reached 

its mature form in the mid-1820s at the planned industrial 

complex at Lowell, Massachusetts. Variously known as the 

Waltham, Lowell, or Northern New England system, it was 

characterized by large-scale integrated factories where raw 

cotton was converted into fi nished fabric (from “bale to 

bolt”) in a single establishment. From the outset, Lowell 

mills produced vast quantities of fairly standardized cotton 

fabric. They required more power, more workers, and vastly more capitalization than Blackstone Valley textile operations. This model became feasible only after some two decades of experience in the Blackstone Valley had proven the 

potential of American textile manufacturing. By the time 

the massive mills at Lowell came on line, more than 400 

textile mill villages of the Rhode Island style fl ourished in 

the U.S., predominantly in southern New England.22

The Waltham and Lowell mills and their successors operated on a much larger scale than their Rhode Island counterparts and were designed to be more vertically integrated. 

21 A consensus on this point was achieved by the scholars who participated in 

the Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study site visit, Feb. 14-16, 2008. See 

reports by Gary Kulik, Walter Licht, David Meyer, et al., www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm. Licht summarized “That term Industrial Revolution has been discarded, utterly discarded into the dust bin by scholars for at least 30 

years.” (Remarks at public meeting, Whitinsville, MA, Feb. 16, 2008, transcribed by 

Alice Darling Secretarial Services, available from Blackstone River Valley National 

Heritage Corridor, NPS.

22 Licht, Industrializing America, 24, and “Report of the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service on the Blackstone River Valley Industrial Heritage Corridor, www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm 

p.2.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 25

They relied on the corporate form of organization, and at 

the outset employed young, single women. Especially in 

the initial stages, the scales of the two systems differed 

vastly. Around 1840 Lowell had a population in excess of 

20,000, of whom perhaps one-third worked in the factories. There were 26 separate cotton mills with a capacity 

of 166,000 spindles. By contrast, the typical Blackstone 

mill village employed perhaps 100 workers in one or possibly two mills with a total capacity of 1,000 spindles.23

The amount of capital employed refl ects the same wide 

divergence: whereas the Lowell corporation was capitalized at $400,000 or more, a village mill could be bought 

for as little as $10,000. By concentrating on large-scale, 

vertically integrated production of a single type of fabric, 

Lowell-style mills sometimes suffered the vicissitudes of 

market saturation or changing fashion. Smaller Rhode Island-style mills sometimes weathered these changes more 

nimbly. If demand for their product fell in one sector, they 

often found markets in another.

The impacts on the physical and social landscape were 

in roughly the same proportion. While both systems were 

segments of the textile industry, and their products were 

sometimes similar, they were grounded in fundamentally 

different concepts of organization, and these differences 

had profound effects on the social and built environment. 

This is evident not only in the scale of the factories, but 

in the residential architecture. Whereas the boarding house 

is the characteristic expression of the Waltham System, 

the single or two-family house is a defi ning feature of the 

Rhode Island construct. In the Rhode Island System, in its 

initial form, members of the owner’s family might work in 

the mills, at least in a technical or supervisory capacity. 

There were examples of former workers rising to become 

mill owners, which was almost unimaginable under the 

Waltham model.

It is misleading to conceive of American industrial history as an inevitable progression from small to giant scale. 

Lowell and “smokestack industries” such as steel mills and 

the massive vertically integrated automobile factories that 

expanded on its model captured the public imagination by 

their overwhelming size and thereby have concealed the 

parallel survival of family-sized manufacturing throughout 

the course of American industry.24 Lowell and its successors were conspicuous for obvious reasons, but remained 

23 Kulik, Parks and Penn, New England Mill Village, xxvii-xxviii.

24 “In fact, as of the late nineteenth century all of these manufacturing approaches continued to operate, and the large-scale, mass production factories existed in 

only a few industries.” David Meyer, “Report: Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study,” www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm, 2008, p.2.

atypical within the context of American industrial production. In 1878 in Massachusetts, only 520 of 11,000 manufacturing companies were organized as corporations.25

Places like Lowell attracted visiting delegations and writers 

looking for stories about the impact of industry, while mill 

communities of the Rhode Island type were so ubiquitous 

that they often escaped notice. Nevertheless, they persisted 

and were more likely to be the source of technological innovation than the vast industrial complexes.

With rival systems coexisting, some convergence became inevitable, making it more diffi cult to fi nd “pure” examples of each type. Moreover, the far-reaching success of 

the Rhode Island model entailed the modifi cation of some 

of its defi ning characteristics, diminishing the disproportionate early infl uence of the Blackstone Valley. Several 

aspects of this process of dilution can be traced. First and 

most obvious was geographical expansion, as this system 

of industrial organization spread throughout New England 

and beyond. Into the 20th century a Rhode Island infl uence 

was discernible in the Southern Piedmont (an area that extends through central North Carolina, South Carolina, and 

Georgia, into eastern Alabama), as a member of the Draper 

family who owned the Hopedale plant transferred elements 

of mill village design to the American South. In her study 

of company housing, Margaret Crawford observes “Like 

the New England textile towns a century earlier, the [southern] mill village embodied a social order directly refl ecting 

the economic logic of the textile industry,” and adds that 

“Southern mills repeated the archetypal experience of modernization pioneered in the New England textile mills...”26

Another aspect of diffusion was the diversifi cation of 

industrial production. First, the textile industry became 

more varied as the weaving process was mechanized and 

the industry offered a wider range of products. The industries that arose to support textile manufacturing, notably 

the manufacture of machinery, built on their advancing 

capabilities to serve many other users. A node of technological expertise formed in the Blackstone Valley at fi rms 

like Brown & Sharpe, Crompton & Knowles, Draper, and 

Whitin Machine Works, where skilled machinists steadily 

improved machines and manufacturing techniques. The 

Valley became an incubator for and disseminator of this 

25 Robert L. Heilbroner and Aaron Singer, The Economic Transformation of 

America, 2nd ed. (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984), 189.

26 Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of American Company 

Towns (Verso, 1995), 174, 175.
26 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

technology throughout the nation.27 Meanwhile, the textile 

industry remained important in the U.S. into the 20th century, but with diminishing infl uence. The industry continued 

to fl ourish in its natal region, with production increasing 

in absolute terms, although the lopsided early dominance 

did not continue. In response to competition from larger 

entities, factories in the Blackstone Valley adapted by turning to more specialized products and those requiring more 

skill.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new factories in 

the Blackstone Valley were built on a larger scale and some 

expanded into vertically integrated production. This trend 

seemed to represent the blending of some of the defi ning 

characteristics of the Rhode Island and Waltham systems. 

This physical similarity may be more superfi cial than substantial, although the boundaries between the two classic 

systems undoubtedly blurred. Company housing and related facilities increased in proportion, and it is noteworthy 

that in most cases the mill villages retained their characteristic forms of ownership, management, and operation. The 

nature of the workforce changed and, except for some of 

the skilled occupations, mills employed largely immigrants 

or the children of immigrants. This represents a degree of 

convergence with the Lowell model, where the initial reliance on young single women of largely rural origins was 

substantially modifi ed beginning as early as the 1840s. 

In sum, although neither system maintained its original 

“pure” form, recognizable distinctions between them persisted. Factory workers in the Blackstone Valley continued 

to live within the familiar social construct of the mill village: family-owned, stratifi ed, discrete, and self-contained 

in important respects.

Another noticeable shift in the Blackstone Valley was 

the greater urbanization of industry. In part this was caused 

by the expansion of mill villages. Since these villages were 

close to each other to take advantage of water power, clusters of formerly separate villages sometimes coalesced into 

a larger unit. This was especially notable at Woonsocket, 

in the middle of the valley, where continued growth created the need for a local business center between the major 

anchor cities at each end. In other cases, industries simply 

located in existing urban centers such as Providence and 

Worcester, where they could enjoy the advantages of bet27 Speaking of the Blackstone Valley, Gary Kulik concludes, “It is not totally 

present-minded to say this was the Silicon Valley of the 19th century.” (Remarks 

at public meeting, Whitinsville, MA, Feb. 16, 2008, transcribed by Alice Darling 

Secretarial Services, (available from Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, NPS). A similar statement is contained in his “Notes on the Historical Signifi cance of the Blackstone Valley,” www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt/special-resourcestudy.htm, 4.

ter transportation, a varied work force, and the presence of 

banks and other support facilities. This phenomenon was 

more characteristic of the machine-making industry and its 

allies, which gathered in the two anchor cities and transformed them into industrial centers noted for producing an 

amazing diversity of manufactured goods. Over the course 

of time, the evolution of urban centers in the Valley became 

one of the defi ning characteristics of the overall region.

Nevertheless, Whitinsville, a signifi cant producer of 

machinery, continued to fl ourish as a detached village. Despite changes in detail, the mill villages of the Blackstone 

River Valley retained their continuity of character into the 

mid-20th century.28

Beginning as early as the closing decades of the 19th century, the textile industry began to shift out of New England, 

fi rst to the South, and ultimately offshore. The one-time 

industrial dominance of the Valley—and New England in 

general—faded dramatically. However, many Blackstone 

Valley fi rms were able to adapt for a time by concentrating 

on specialized niches in the textile industry, or by diversifying into other industries. The interest and involvement 

of the established proprietary families often persisted. As 

late as the 1920s, the owners of Slatersville updated their 

village by introducing elements of the prevailing Colonial 

Revival movement. In doing so, they invoked a shared past 

that, while not literally accurate, demonstrated both their 

commitment to historical continuity and their confi dence 

in the viability of manufacturing.

In the Blackstone Valley, 20th-century deindustrialization followed a pervasive and harsh course and resulted in 

a period of demoralization. Subsequently, however, the establishment of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in 1986 both exemplifi ed and contributed to 

renewal. Although industrial production in the Blackstone 

Valley is now greatly diminished, the industrial character of 

the region remains overwhelmingly evident. It has shaped 

the spatial arrangement and the physical appearance of the 

Valley, and perhaps also the attitudes of its inhabitants. The 

ongoing adaptive reuse of former mills and mill village 

housing, as well as efforts to preserve the context of open 

land in which the mill villages thrived, confi rm that the distinctive and deeply embedded character of the region can 

provide the basis for a successful future.

28 “The mill villages of the Blackstone River Valley contained small and largescale renowned enterprises—they belie quaintness—and they endured into the twentieth century (not ephemeral contributors to American industrial history).” Walter 

Licht, “Report of the Organization of American Historians and the National Park 

Service on the Blackstone River Valley Industrial Heritage Corridor, www.nps.gov/

blac/parkmgmt/special-resource-study.htm, p.2-3.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 27

Cultural Resource Areas

Introduction

The Blackstone River Valley of Rhode Island and Massachusetts presents an industrialized landscape developed 

over a period of more than 100 years, beginning with Old 

Slater Mill in the early 1790s. In subsequent decades, industrialization spread along the Blackstone River and its 

main tributaries, overlaying or fi lling in the existing agrarian landscape. This industrial development employed a distinctive form of organization which, because of its origins 

and prevalence in this region, became known as the Rhode 

Island System of manufacture. It is characterized by production in discrete villages centered around mills that drew 

power at suitable sites along the Blackstone River and its 

tributaries. By 1850, dozens of such villages fl ourished in 

the Blackstone Valley, and the river had been intensively 

engineered to provide controlled power for the mills. These 

mills were massively constructed for reasons of safety and 

stability, and to convey a feeling of permanence.

The manufacturing facilities were almost entirely devoted to textile production and allied industries, notably 

machinery and tools. This industrial monoculture guided 

by a unifying concept of organization and manifested in 

similar forms and structures, formed a dense and cohesive 

industrial district along the waterways of the Blackstone 

Valley. The industrial development of this district was so 

pervasive and deeply rooted that decades of deindustrialization, extending through much of the 20th century, has 

not erased its imprint. Throughout the valley, evidence of 

the industrial past is inescapable and continues to defi ne 

the region’s character. It is visible in the numerous mill villages in various states of completeness, with their defi ning 

mills, similar but stratifi ed housing, public buildings, and 

water control facilities, all strung along the Blackstone or 

any tributary capable of being harnessed, and often set off 

against an agrarian backdrop whose architecture maintains 

some of the traditional character of New England.

The cumulative nature and signifi cance of the Valley’s 

industrial resources has been recognized since at least 

1986, when the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage 

Corridor was established by Congress. Through this Special Resource Study, the National Park Service continues 

to examine the industrial heritage resources of the Valley 

in depth. After evaluating numerous resources Valley-wide, 

including over 20 mill village locations, a group of seven 

outstanding resources has been selected because they best 

illustrate the region’s nationally signifi cant themes and possess the greatest levels of completeness and integrity:

• The Blackstone River & Its Tributaries

• The Blackstone Canal Historic Districts

• Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark District

• Mill Villages

 · Slatersville Historic District

 · Ashton Historic District

 · Whitinsville Historic District

 · Hopedale Village Historic District

The Valley Landscape

Stretching from Providence, Rhode Island, north to 

Worcester, Massachusetts, the 46-mile long Blackstone 

River forms the Valley’s “spine” and supported the majority of the region’s water-powered mills, while its many 

tributaries – including the Branch, Mumford, and Mill rivers – enabled industrialization to spread throughout the 

watershed. The decline of the region’s industry in the early 

20th century led to disinvestment and economic stagnation, while in recent years suburbanization has taken hold, 

with residential development consuming open space and, 

in some cases, blurring the once-clear boundaries of the 

self-contained mill villages. The Blackstone Valley continues to be a working landscape characterized by a number 

of resource types, including: mill villages, urban centers, 

rural agricultural land and open space, and at its core, the 

Blackstone River itself. The interrelationships among these 

resource types contribute to a distinct sense of place that 

pervades the Valley and provides the essential context for 

the resources under consideration in this analysis.

Mill Villages

Mill villages in the Blackstone Valley represent the 

characteristic physical expression of rural industrialization 

known as the Rhode Island System of manufacture. Initially modeled on English precedents, the mill villages were 

centered on a mill and its infrastructure with family worker 

housing, commercial enterprises, and community amenities provided by the mill’s owners. In her Blackstone Valley 

Site Visit report, Alison K. Hoagland offers the following 

characterization of the Valley’s mill villages:

The mill villages are an engineered landscape, just as 

the mills and their power systems are. These villages 

did not spring up organically. They are manifestations 

of the companies, particularly in their intentions 

and attitudes toward their workers. In the housing, 
28 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

the hierarchy of a village is often apparent, both in 

the size of the dwellings (management receiving 

larger houses) and in their location (management 

housing located on high ground, farther from 

the mill). These corporate communities often 

demonstrated a paternalistic interest in the morality 

of their employees, complemented by a rigid sense 

of social hierarchy. This early 19th century attitude 

continued in some of these villages long after other 

industrialists took a more businesslike and detached 

attitude toward their employees.29

The mill villages described subsequently were highlighted in the Special Resource Study process because of 

their particularly high level of physical integrity and completeness and for the outstanding visitor experience potential that they offer in terms of opportunities for education, 

interpretation, and further study.

Urban Centers

The historic industrial development of the Blackstone 

Valley is also refl ected in its urban centers. By the late 18th 

century, Providence, a port city, had a well-developed maritime trade and an established merchant class, whose wealth 

fueled industrial innovation and development throughout 

the Valley. The College Hill Historic District, a National 

Historic Landmark District in Providence, includes the 

mansions of many of the fi nanciers of the industrial revolution. Home to Slater Mill (1793), discussed in greater detail below, Pawtucket made the transition from a small mill 

village to an industrial city over the course of a century. 

The city of Woonsocket was formed when six industrial 

villages merged and were incorporated in 1888. Remnants 

of the former industrial villages are evident in the city’s 

neighborhoods. Finally, the City of Worcester evolved as a 

regional market center for central Massachusetts in the late 

18th century. Its major development as an industrial center 

occurred after the opening of the Blackstone Canal in 1828 

and was greatly accelerated by the coming of the railroad 

in the 1830s.

Agricultural Land and Open Space

Industrialization in the Blackstone Valley was overlaid 

on an agrarian landscape that had developed over more 

than 150 years. Though diminished by late 20th-century 

suburbanization, areas characterized by agriculture, open 

space, and woodland remain and evoke the region’s historic 

29 Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of 

American Company Towns (London: Verso, 1995), 33, mentions Whitinsville and 

Hopedale in this regard, as quoted by Alison Kim Hoagland, “Report on Site Visit, 

Blackstone River Valley Special Resource Study, Feb. 14-16, 2008.

landscape. Surviving elements of this landscape contribute 

to our understanding of the context and important characteristics of the industrial mill villages as they developed. 

This rural landscape is especially evident within the Great 

Road Historic District in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and at 

River Bend Farm in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Traditional 

upland rural town centers that co-existed with the mill villages are visible in places such as Grafton and Sutton, MA. 

The Southwick-Daniels Farm in Blackstone, MA, predates 

industrialization and remained an active family farm into 

the mid-20th century. At Whitinsville, the Whitin family 

set up Castle Hill Farm, a model farm that provided milk 

for Whitin employees and also provided work when times 

were slow at the mills.

Blackstone River and its Tributaries

The Blackstone River forms the natural spine of the 

Blackstone Valley and is the source of the region’s physical 

and historical identity. In its 46-mile journey from its headwaters in Worcester to Narragansett Bay in Providence, 

the river meanders past quiet, wooded landscapes, courses through once-bustling mill villages, and is channeled 

through intensely developed urban centers. The Blackstone 

River is joined by four major tributaries (the Branch, Mumford, Quinsigamond, and West) along with many smaller 

branches, to form a watershed that encompasses 500 square 

miles and supports over 1,300 acres of ponds, lakes, and 

reservoirs.

The Blackstone River drops a total of 438 feet along 

its route. Beginning in the late 18th century, this water 

power was exploited with the construction of dams to support manufacturing. By the time of its peak industrial use 

in the early 20th century, there were 34 dams along the 

Blackstone River, 11 of them in Rhode Island. Scores of 

mills and mill villages sprang up along the river’s banks, 

forever altering the Valley’s landscape and giving rise to 

the Blackstone’s reputation as the “hardest working river 

in America.” The effects of industrialization were obvious: 

a 1990 report sponsored by the Environmental Protection 

Agency called the Blackstone “the most polluted river in 

the country with respect to toxic sediments.” While water 

quality remains an issue, considerable progress has been 

made since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 and 

through the efforts of public agencies, as well as concerned 

citizens who, beginning in the 1970s, have organized cleanup efforts and water quality monitoring programs. In 1998, 

the Blackstone River was designated an American Heritage 
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 29

River to acknowledge both its special importance in American industrial history and the sustained efforts to restore it.

The harnessing of the Blackstone River and its tributaries is still evident throughout the Valley. Historic dams 

and their resulting impoundments continue to be managed 

and used for a variety of purposes, including a number of 

small-scale hydropower projects, fl ood control, and recreation. Seventeen of the original 34 dams on the Blackstone 

River remain intact. Likewise, numerous historic dams and 

impoundments on its tributaries survive including sites in 

Slatersville, RI, Whitinsville, MA, and Hopedale, MA.

Blackstone Canal

National Register of Historic Places – MA segment 1995; RI from 

Providence to Ashton 1971; RI from Ashton to MA state line 

1991.

First proposed in the 1790s and constructed between 

1824 and 1828, the Blackstone Canal connected the port 

of Providence to the inland town of Worcester, paralleling the Blackstone River along its approximately 46-mile 

route. Tow paths ran the length of the canal to accommodate the draft animals used to move the canal boats. Granite 

markers, set upright in the towpath, denoted each mile. The 

Blackstone Canal, with 48 locks that enabled boats to negotiate elevation changes, was constructed largely by hand 

and followed the contours of the river as much as possible. 

A system of dams and reservoirs – most created from natural water bodies – helped regulate the water level in the 

canal and, in some cases, also served local manufacturers’ 

power needs.

Though sometimes used as a means of transportation 

for people, the canal was primarily a way to ship goods; 

raw materials were brought to industrial centers, while fi nished goods were shipped to urban markets. A variety of 

factors, including fi nancial diffi culties, disputes over water 

rights, diffi culty maintaining consistent water levels, and 

the impossibility of using the canal in the winter, led to 

the closing of the Blackstone Canal in the 1840s. The fi -

nal blow was the opening of the Providence & Worcester 

(P&W) Railroad in 1847, which provided a faster and less 

expensive means of transportation in the Blackstone River 

Valley. All operations of the Blackstone River Canal Corporation ceased in 1848. The P&W purchased much of the 

canal property, and its route generally followed that of the 

canal; in some sections, the railroad tracks were laid on the 

towpath. In many locations, the canal trench was converted 

to power canals to serve existing and new mills.

The full length of the Blackstone Canal, from Providence 

to Worcester, is listed in the National Register of Historic 

Places as two separate districts – one in Massachusetts, one 

in Rhode Island. Segments of the canal trench and towpath, 

along with other canal features – some remarkably intact – 

survive in both states. The best-preserved section of canal 

in Rhode Island is located in the town of Lincoln, within 

the Blackstone River State Park. Owned and operated by 

the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RI DEM), the park consists of a 3-mile-long segment 

of the canal, located to the west of the river, and approximately 150 acres of land on either side of the canal trench.

In Massachusetts, the most intact section of canal and 

towpath is located within the Blackstone River & Canal 

Heritage State Park, which encompasses about 1,000 acres 

in the towns of Uxbridge and Northbridge and is owned 

and operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (MA DCR). The park property conveys a strong rural character with its rolling hills, wooded 

areas, and former agricultural fi elds. At the southern end 

of the towpath trail is the Stanley Woolen Mill, an 1852, 

4-story, wood-frame textile mill in private ownership. Rice 

City Pond, a holding pond created by the construction of a 

dam in 1865-69, is located at the northern end of the towpath trail. Three sets of water-control structures that supported the operation of the canal were recently restored.

A trail leads to Goat Hill Lock in Northbridge, where 

one can see the components of a relatively intact canal 

lock. At Plummer’s Landing in Northbridge, the archaeological remains of a landing basin and trading house are 

visible, along with portions of a canal lock. The best-preserved lock on the Blackstone Canal is located in the town 

of Millville and is owned by the MA DCR. The approximately 12-feet-tall, cut granite walls are intact and structurally sound. The sockets necessary to accommodate the 

now-missing canal gates are still visible.

Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark 

District, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

National Historic Landmark, 1966. Amended 1975.

Industrialization in America traces its origins to the 

banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket. It was here 

in 1790 that Samuel Slater, recently arrived from England, 

worked with local machinists and investors to transplant 

the Arkwright system from England, establishing America’s fi rst successful water-powered cotton spinning mill. 

Slater began his operation in an old fulling mill, where it 

remained for three years; in 1793, he constructed a new mill 
30 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

built specifi cally for spinning cotton thread. Now known as 

Old Slater Mill, the building is considered America’s earliest factory.30 The site was declared a National Historic 

Landmark (NHL) in 1966.

The Slater Mill Historic Site NHL includes three buildings on the west bank of the Blackstone River in downtown Pawtucket: Old Slater Mill (1793 et seq.), Wilkinson 

Mill (ca. 1810 et seq.), and the Sylvanus Brown House 

(ca. 1758; moved to the site in 1962). The approximately 

4.2-acre site also encompasses an open parcel on the opposite side of the river, two dams, and a parking area. The 

NHL district is managed by the Old Slater Mill Association 

(OSMA) as the Old Slater Mill Historic Site and Museum.

The centerpiece of the Slater Mill Historic Site is Old 

Slater Mill, sited at the edge of the Blackstone River, a 

21⁄2-story, wood-frame building with a trapdoor monitor 

and a prominent bell tower. The oldest part of the mill was 

constructed in 1793, with additions around 1817 and 1835. 

30 Richard E. Greenwood, “Industrial Architecture of the Blackstone Valley.” In 

Claire W. Dempsey, Richard E. Greenwood, and William McKenzie Woodward, The 

Early Architecture and Landscapes of the Narragansett Basin, Volume II: Blackstone 

River Valley and Providence. (The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2001.), 21.

A tailrace stone arch, believed to date to 1793, marks the 

location of the power canal that ran under the south end of 

the building. Typical of mills of this period, Slater Mill differed “very little from the simpler building types of the day. 

The end seen alone might be taken for a large eighteenth 

century farmhouse...; the projecting wing with its belfry 

might well be the front of a country meeting house”.31 Despite their vernacular appearance, early mills represented a 

new regional building type, and their form refl ected their 

purpose. The large, open interior spaces and elongated 

fl oor plans were designed to accommodate rows of machinery running off a system of drive belts and overhead shafts, 

while the need for natural light called for large windows 

and skylights.32

The ca. 1810 Wilkinson Mill is a large, 31⁄2-story, rubblestone building located immediately to the southwest of 

Old Slater Mill. A brick stair tower and belfry was added 

around 1840. Important textile machinery was designed 

and manufactured by David Wilkinson in this building. 

Today, a reproduction waterwheel provides power to the 

extensive machine collection housed on the building’s fi rst 

fl oor.

In 1962, the Old Slater Mill Association moved the Sylvanus Brown House, threatened with demolition, to the 

31 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Rhode Island Architecture. (New York: Da Capo 

Press, 1968.), 39.

32 Richard E. Greenwood, “Industrial Architecture of the Blackstone Valley.” 21-

22.

BLACKSTONE RIVER

ROOSEVELT AVENUE

MAIN STREET

MAIN STREET

MAIN STREET

SCHOOL STREET

BROADWAY

SLATER AVENUE

LEATHER AVENUE

Figure 2: Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark District – 

Not to Scale.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 31

site. Constructed around 1758, the wood-frame, 11⁄2-story dwelling once served as a multi-family residence and 

boardinghouse. Tradition holds that Samuel Slater spent 

his fi rst night in Pawtucket in this house, whose owner, 

Sylvanus Brown, made patterns and wood parts for Slater’s 

machines.

Old Slater Mill Historic Site and Museum is owned 

and operated by the Old Slater Mill Association (OSMA), 

which offers regularly scheduled tours and programs to the 

general public. OSMA has been preserving and maintaining the site since 1921. Staff members from the Commission currently provide operational and programmatic support to the museum.

Mill Villages

Slatersville Historic District,

North Smithfi eld, Rhode Island

National Register of Historic Places, 1973

Following the success of his Pawtucket enterprise, Samuel Slater, his protégés and others established mills up and 

down the Blackstone River and its tributaries, transforming the region’s economy and its landscape. As one of “the 

generative centers of the American Industrial Revolution,” 

the Blackstone Valley became the source of “new technology, new building types, and new community forms.”33 The 

fi rst of this new type of community was called Slatersville 

and was established in 1806-1807 by Samuel Slater and 

his brother, John (with fi nancial backing from Almy & 

Brown), on the Branch River, about 10 miles northwest of 

Slater Mill. Slatersville was located far from a population 

center, and the Slaters attracted workers by providing family housing as well as civic and social amenities. A selfcontained community centered around the mills, Slatersville is considered “the fi rst successful industrial landscape 

in America, a reproducible type of company town,” which 

was duplicated hundreds of times over, throughout the 

Blackstone Valley, across New England, and up and down 

the east coast.34 In addition to being an extremely important 

prototype, Slatersville was one of the longest-surviving 

company towns in the country; the town remained under 

ownership of the Slater family until ca. 1900, when it was 

sold to James R. Hooper, who converted the mills into a 

bleaching and dyeing operation. The company and village 

33 Richard E. Greenwood, “Industrial Architecture of the Blackstone Valley.” 21.

34 Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of 

American Company Towns. (London: Verso, 1995), 19.

were purchased in 1915 by Henry Kendall, a textile manufacturer, who retained ownership until 1954.35

The village of Slatersville, which still looks much as it 

did in the 19th century, was organized along two axes, with 

the mills occupying a site on low ground on the north bank 

of the Branch River. A reservoir system provided the power 

needed to support the operation and included two large 

ponds, dams (ca. 1849 and ca. 1876), canal trenches (ca. 

1806-1807, ca. 1821, and ca. 1876) and spillways (1849 

and 1876). Most of the power canal system survives today, 

a reminder of the extent to which the Slaters and their successors manipulated water resources to provide the power 

needed to run the mills.

The earliest mill in Slatersville was constructed ca. 

1806-1807 and was likely wood-frame; it burned in the 

1820s. One factory building from that period survives 

and was used at the end of the 1800s as an offi ce; it may 

originally have been a bobbin mill.36 In 1826, the Slaters 

replaced the mill that had been destroyed by fi re with the 

Center Mill, also known as Mill #1, a massive, 4-story, ashlar masonry building with a clerestory monitor and a fullheight stair tower capped with a belfry. The building was 

raised to fi ve stories and its monitor removed sometime before 1894. The four-story Mill #3 – similar in appearance 

to Mill #1 – was built nearby in 1843. Both have recently 

been rehabilitated as apartments with the help of historic 

rehabilitation tax credits and according to the Secretary of 

the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.

Housing was located on higher ground, and included numerous wood-frame, 11⁄2- and 21⁄2-story workers’ dwellings 

which, although designed to resemble traditional single35 Richard E. Greenwood, “Slatersville, North Smithfi eld, RI” In Claire W. 

Dempsey, Richard E. Greenwood, and William McKenzie Woodward, The Early Architecture and Landscapes of the Narragansett Basin, Volume II: Blackstone River 

Valley and Providence. (The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2001.), 49-51.

36 Richard E. Greenwood, “Slatersville, North Smithfi eld, RI.” 49-50.
32 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

family homes, were divided into multiple units. The earliest of these houses were built between ca. 1806 and ca. 

1840, and many survive along the village’s main axis. Additional workers’ housing – more modest than the original 

– was constructed in the second half of the 19th century, 

and numerous examples remain. Dozens of supervisors’ 

houses were built between 1850 and the late 1920s. Two 

structures, John Slater’s residence (ca. 1806; moved 1844), 

a 21⁄2-story, wood-frame dwelling, and the Elisha Bartlett 

House (ca. 1844), a Greek Revival-style residence built by 

Slater’s son-in-law, provide examples of the homes occupied by mill owners.

Public amenities in Slatersville include a meeting 

house (1808; moved in 1816 and again in 1887), used for 

religious purposes as well as for public meetings and as 

a school, and two 31⁄2-story, masonry commercial blocks 

(1850 and 1870), which housed stores, the post offi ce, a 

bank, and a social hall. Three churches were constructed 

in the 1800s: the Congregational Church in 1838, fronting 

onto a newly created “village green”; the Roman Catholic 

Church in 1872; and the Episcopal Church in 1897. Even 

in the 20th century, when the town was owned and operated 

by the Kendall Company, civic buildings continued to be 

constructed, including the town hall (1921) and the WPAera Kendall Dean School (early 1930s) refl ecting the later 

industrial period.

RESERVOIR

VICTORY HWY

LESTER ST.

MCCANN ST.

PARK VIEW DR.

MAIN STREET

RIDGE RD

GREEN STREET PACHECO DR

PROVIDENCE PIKE 

GRAHAM DR.

SCHOOL STREET

HALIWELL 

CHARON DR.

CHURCH STREET

NORTH MAIN STREET

PARK

CENTENNIAL

 MEMORIAL

MYRICK DR.

BRANCH RIVER

CEMETERY

CEMETERY

COUNTRY WAY

Figure 3: Slatersville Historic District – Not to Scale.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 33

Ashton Historic District, Cumberland, Rhode Island

National Register of Historic Places, 1984

The village of Ashton was developed beginning in the 

mid-1800s by the Lonsdale Company, one of the most 

prosperous and productive of Rhode Island’s textile manufacturing fi rms. The company eventually owned and operated three distinct mill villages along the Blackstone River: 

Lonsdale (est. 1830s), Ashton (acquired 1840s; expanded 

1860s), and Berkeley (est. 1870s). All three villages are 

listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Ashton 

retains a particularly high level of integrity, both in terms 

of its overall layout and its individual buildings.

Industrial development in the area of present-day Ashton began in the 1810s, when the Smithfi eld Cotton & 

Woolen Company built a small mill (no longer extant) and 

some workers’ housing on the west side of the Blackstone 

River, in the town of Lincoln. The Lonsdale Company acquired the struggling mill in the 1840s and, spurred by the 

opening of the Providence & Worcester Railroad on the 

Cumberland side of the river in 1848, created a successful enterprise. The company acquired additional land in 

Cumberland in 1863 and soon began building the village of 

Ashton, a premier example of a planned mill village, which 

survives largely intact to this day.

Like Slatersville, Ashton was conceived as a self-contained village, and it refl ected many of the characteristics 

of the Rhode Island System of manufacture. Mendon Road 

(Rte. 122) runs north-south through the village along a 

ridge, effectively dividing Ashton into two sections: the 

lower village, consisting of the mill and numerous workers’ 

dwellings hugging the east bank of the Blackstone River, 

and the upper village, with houses and civic amenities 

along Mendon and Scott Roads. The focal point of the village is the Ashton Mill, a large brick building constructed 

in 1867. Ancillary mill structures include a 11⁄2-story brick 

building with a mansard roof, originally the mill offi ce, 

and a largely unadorned power house that sits on the river 

bank. One of the earliest high-speed spindles developed in 

America, the Sawyer spindle, was fi rst tested on a large 

scale at the Ashton Mill. The Lonsdale Company continued 

to produce textiles here until closing the operation in 1935. 

The main mill building, mill offi ce, and power house have 

recently been adaptively reused as rental apartments, with 

assistance from historic rehabilitation tax credits and according to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the 

Treatment of Historic Properties.

Near the mill complex, just across the railroad tracks, 

the Lonsdale Company built a tight cluster of simple housing for its employees in 1867. Nineteen brick, multi-family workers’ dwellings remain; eleven of these are simple, 

11⁄2-story houses, and the remaining eight are similar in 

MENDON ROAD (RTE 122)

MENDON ROAD (RTE 122)

SCOTT ROAD

ANGELL ROAD (RTE 116)

OLD ANGELL RD

FRONT STREET

MIDDLE STREET

STORE HILL ROAD

MENDON ROAD (RTE 122)

ASHTON MILL

PROVIDENCE–WORCESTER RAILROAD CO. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON HIGHWAY (RTE 116) BLACKSTONE RIVER

DAM

Figure 4: Ashton Historic District – Draft – Not to Scale.

Photo Credit: Bill Murphy.
34 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

style and materials, though somewhat larger at 21⁄2-stories. 

The company also built a 11⁄2-story, brick row house and a 

21⁄2-story brick tenement building, identical to the multifamily housing in style and materials but signifi cantly larger. All of these dwellings survive and remain in residential 

use. According to the National Register nomination for 

Ashton Village, “the rows of brick dwellings near the mill 

are...noteworthy for the strong visual impact created by the 

grouping of a few standard building types similar in form 

and identical in scale, materials, and detailing.”37

The upper village at Ashton, though separated by topography from the mill and brick housing described above, 

has strong visual and functional connections to the rest 

of the village. Three 21⁄2-story brick, multi-family houses 

are located on Mendon Road, overlooking the cluster of 

housing below. Built in 1867 and similar in style and materials to the housing in the lower village, these properties 

exhibit a slightly higher level of architectural detail – for 

example, they feature granite sills and lintels – and were 

probably built for supervisory staff. The Lonsdale Company built some notable civic amenities around the same 

time. A 21⁄2-story, brick schoolhouse was constructed on 

Mendon Road ca. 1868 to serve the mill village’s residents; 

like the housing, the presence of a schoolhouse refl ects the 

employment of whole families at the mill. The paternalism 

of the Lonsdale Company is evident in the construction of 

a small, wood-frame Episcopal chapel ca. 1860 (enlarged 

in 1907 and converted to a Parish House) and, in 1868, the 

large, wood-frame, Carpenter Gothic-style St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Whitinsville Historic District, Northbridge, Massachusetts

National Register of Historic Places, 1983

The village of Whitinsville is the largest and most intensely developed of the Blackstone Valley mill villages, 

with a historic district that encompasses about 250 acres 

37 Robert O. Jones, National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination 

Form, Ashton Historic District. 1982.

and approximately 350 structures built over the course of 

a century. Organized around three factory complexes along 

the Mumford River, Whitinsville provides “an unusually 

complete record of the phased expansion of an industrial 

community” with “remarkably full-blown and intact examples of the economic and social institutions of mill village 

life.”38 In addition to the mills, Whitinsville contains hundreds of dwellings – built for mill owners as well as mill 

workers – and a distinctive assemblage of company-sponsored civic facilities. The Whitinsville Historic District was 

placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Whitinsville is named for the Whitin family, who were 

prominent in textile production and textile machinery 

manufacturing. However, the industrialization of the area 

preceded the Whitins. A textile mill (no longer extant) was 

founded in the village in 1809, and an iron forge was established in the 18th century, near the present-day village center. The original building no longer stands, though portions 

may survive within the 1879-1886 forge that replaced it. 

The earliest industrial building associated with the Whitin 

family is the 1826 Old Brick Mill, a cotton factory built 

by Colonel Paul Whitin and Sons. It is representative of a 

period of expansion in textile mills and is considered “one 

of the most signifi cant examples of its type and period of 

factory construction still standing in New England.”39 The 

Whitinsville Spinning Ring Company, which dates from 

1873, began in the Old Brick Mill and the Forge and gradually expanded, creating a large industrial complex. The 

entire complex was recently rehabilitated and now houses 

offi ces, apartments, a theater, and commercial space.

The Whitinsville Cotton Mills complex is located immediately on the north bank of the Mumford River. Built 

by Paul Whitin and Sons in 1845, the large factory has exterior walls of ashlar, a clerestory monitor roof and a belfry. 

It is an excellent example of an 1840s mill, its large size 

refl ecting a scale of production made possible by advances 

in water-power technology and the introduction of turbines 

and belt-drives. Its rear addition, constructed in 1864, 

housed a steam-power plant. The building was converted 

into apartments in the 1980s.

The last of the three industrial complexes located in 

Whitinsville is the Whitin Machine Works, a sprawling 

factory developed by John C. Whitin to produce textile machinery. This ancillary industry was a critical component 

38 Wendy Frontiero with Michael B. Zuckerman and Kenneth Warchol. National 

Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form, Whitinsville Historic District. 1983.

39 Wendy Frontiero. Whitinsville Historic District. 1983.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 35

of the Blackstone Valley economy and a key element in the 

Whitin family’s success. John C. Whitin patented a cotton 

picker in 1831, which was followed by other inventions, all 

of which contributed to the family’s dominance in picking, 

carding, and spinning machinery production. Whitin began 

the construction of the Machine Works in 1847, and the 

complex was expanded every ten years or so through the 

1920s, ultimately including buildings on both sides of the 

Mumford River and encompassing 1.75 million square feet 

of fl oor space. The complex is partially occupied and is being rehabilitated in stages.

All three factory complexes in Whitinsville were powered by the Mumford River, which was dammed in multiple 

locations. All told, about a dozen reservoirs were created by 

the Whitin Machine Works to provide power for the mills, 

as well as storing water for drinking and fi re protection. 

RILEY POND

PICKERAL

POND

CASTLE HILL

FARM

MAPLE STREET

HILL STREET

COTTAGE STREET

EAST STREET

EAST STREET

BROOK STREET

FLETCHER STREET

ELM ST ELM PLACE

WHITIN AVENUE

DAM

PARK ST

WILLOW STREET

JOHNSON AVENUE

GRANITE STREET

LELAND ROAD

CHURCH STREET

MAIN STREET

MAIN STREET

LINWOOD AVENUE

LINDEN STREET

HIGH STREET

GROVE STREET

WEST ST

OAK STREET

WATER STREET

UPPER HIGH ST.

CHESTNUT STREET

FOREST STREET

PINE STREET

MUMFORD RIVER

MILL

TOWN

HALL MILL

SCHOOL

SCHOOL

CHURCH

SUMMIT STREET

WOODLAND ST

WATER STREET

CHURCH STREET

PLEASANT STREET

CROSS STREET

DOUGLAS STREET

CASTLE HILL ROAD

 LAK E ST

Figure 5: Whitinsville Historic District – Draft – Not to Scale.
36 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

The reservoirs that powered the Machine Works were the 

largest in the system and were located on the main stem of 

the Mumford River.

The Whitins and their successors constructed rental housing for those who worked in their mills. Due to 

Whitinsville’s large scale and its long period of development – ranging from the 1820s through the 1920s – it has 

an unusually extensive and stylistically varied collection 

of housing. In Whitinsville, one sees the “complete social 

spectrum of the factory village, from the mansions of the 

owners and top offi cials of the mills, to the commodious 

residences of mid-level managers, to the cottages of foremen, to the duplexes of skilled and clerical workers, to the 

multi-family tenements of unskilled laborers.”40 Numerous 

houses were built from the 1830s through the 1860s, coinciding with the establishment and subsequent expansion 

of both the Whitinsville Cotton Mills and Whitin Machine 

Works. Over 60 Greek Revival-style residences survive, including the ca. 1840 John C. Whitin mansion, as well as a 

range of dwellings for mill workers. These include 11⁄2-story single-family residences; clusters of 11⁄2-story duplexes 

with paired central doorways; and 21⁄2-story multi-family 

tenements. The next great housing boom in Whitinsville 

occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century, when the 

Whitin Machine Works expanded signifi cantly. Almost 100 

houses date from this period, refl ecting the popular Queen 

Anne style and including mill owners’ mansions; middleclass dwellings; and scores of duplexes built as workers’ 

houses. Residential construction continued in the 20th century, though at a somewhat slower pace. A group of Colonial Revival-style duplexes were built around 1900, while 

the years following World War I saw the construction of 

about 50 houses by Whitin Machine Works, mostly for upper-level workers.

40 Ibid.

In addition to its extensive housing stock, Whitinsville 

is notable for the many high-quality, architect-designed 

civic buildings constructed by the Whitin family and its 

successors between 1870 and 1920. Most are located at the 

village center, near Memorial Square, creating a civic core 

that speaks to the Whitins’ deep paternalism. The oldest 

of these buildings is the 1872 Town Hall, a 2-story, brick, 

Italianate-style building. The Neo-Classical-style, 2-story, 

brick and cast stone Whitinsville Savings Bank / Post Offi ce was erected in 1905, and the Whitinsville Social Library, a Neo-Classical-style, 1-story, granite building with 

a pedimented portico followed in 1913. George M. Whitin’s 

daughters commissioned the Whitin Gymnasium, a 1-story, 

brick and cast stone building with Neo-Federal details, in 

1923. Three schools were built with funding from the mill 

owners (Clarke School, 1878, Aldrich School,1890, and 

Whitin-Lasell High School,1906), as well as three churches 

(Village Congregational, 1898, St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, 1898, and the United Methodist Church,1911).

Finally, the mill owners built several company stores 

where mill workers could purchase dry goods and basic 

food, and established a farm that provided produce and 

dairy products. Castle Hill Farm, located on a hilltop to 

the south of the village center, was originally a 200-acre 

“hobby farm” owned by John C. Whitin. During the economic depression of 1874-1879, Whitin put many of his 

employees to work clearing the land and building a series 

of magnifi cent stone walls at the farm. A large, 19th-century stone-and-shingle barn burned in the 1950s, though 

the foundation and fi rst-story stone walls remain. Castle 

Hill Farm’s 200 acres are currently split between Whitinsville and the neighboring town of Uxbridge. Though no 

longer an operating farm, Castle Hill is the one of the only 

company-owned farms that has escaped development in the 

Blackstone River Valley.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 37

Hopedale Village Historic District,

Hopedale, Massachusetts

National Register of Historic Places, 2002

Hopedale Village is the civic, residential, and industrial 

center of the town of Hopedale, which was settled as a utopian community in the 1840s but soon transformed into a 

model company town under the management of the Draper 

family. The Hopedale Village Historic District, added to 

the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, encompasses about 800 acres and includes almost 800 resources – buildings as well as designed landscapes, structures, 

and objects. Signifi cant for its association with the Draper 

Company, which was the largest manufacturer of cotton 

textile machinery in the nation in the late 19th and early 

20th centuries, it is an excellent (if somewhat unusual) example of a Blackstone Valley mill village. It includes truly 

exceptional examples of architect-designed residences and 

civic amenities and was recognized as the state of the art 

in the design of workers’ housing at the turn of the 20th 

century.

The most important industrial venture in the community 

was the textile machinery factory operated by Ebenezer 

Draper, an early member of the utopian community, who 

was joined by his brother, George, in 1853. The Drapers’ 

ca. 1843 factory building, now commonly known as the 

Little Red Shop, survives, though not in its original location. The simple, 1-story, wood-frame building was donated to the town by the Draper family in the 1970s and 

currently houses a collection of Draper textile machinery. 

In addition, a number of residences from the utopian period 

remain. They are typically front-gable, wood-frame dwellings, 11⁄2 to 21⁄2-stories tall and with Greek Revival-style 

detailing. Of particular note is the 1843 Greek Revivalstyle home of Adin Ballou, the community’s founder and 

spiritual leader.

The utopian experiment at Hopedale failed in 1856, and 

the Draper brothers took over most of the community’s assets, expanded their business, and ushered in a new era of 

secular paternalism. Ebenezer and George improved on 

their father’s patented self-moving loom temple, developed 

new textile machinery, and acquired innovative small businesses that produced advances in relevant technologies.

The Draper Plant complex currently occupies about 27 

acres and consists of a sprawling complex of massive inter-connected 3- to 4-story brick buildings that, with their 

similar height and massing, dominate the village center. 

Extant individual buildings include the ca. 1892 Machine 

Shop, Wooden Temple Shop, Blacksmith Shop, North Connecting Shop and Center Connecting Shop; the ca. 1900 

Power Plant, with its tall brick chimney, and No. 1 and No. 

2 Hose Houses, which provided on-site fi refi ghting capacity; the ca. 1901 Carpenter Shop; the ca. 1903 Oil House; 

the ca. 1930 Dry Storage and Roughing Room; and several 

buildings dating from the mid-20th century. In addition, 

elements of the historic water power system are evident: 

Hopedale Pond, the Hopedale Pond Dam, and the Raceway 

(which directed water under the factory through a series of 

brick arches and piers) all date to ca. 1875, and an open-air, 

stone-lined tailrace (ca.1895) cuts across the southern part 

of the site. The Company’s Main Offi ce Building (1910-

1911), designed in the Renaissance Revival style by Robert 

Allen Cook, a local architect, is a 2-story building constructed of brick with red terracotta trim, parapet, and cornice. The Main Offi ce Building was adaptively re-used as 

an assisted living facility in 1998. The Draper Plant complex is privately owned.

Hopedale includes a range of housing, from companybuilt workers’ dwellings to mill owners’ mansions. The 

high quality of the housing – and the fact that much of it 

was architect-designed – is unusual and contributed to the 

village’s reputation as a “model company town” at the turn 

of the 20th century. By the late 1880s, the Company had established three types of housing for its staff: single-family 

houses, boardinghouses, and double-houses for workers 

with families. The most common form of company-built 

housing in Hopedale Village was the double-house – there 

are scores of them throughout the village. Those constructed between the 1860s and 1910s were generally based on 

a handful of standard plans that could be modifi ed in their 

exterior appearance and detailing. The earliest of these 

were built immediately adjacent to the Draper Plant.

From the late 1890s through the 1910s, the Company 

hired prominent landscape architects Warren Manning and 
38 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

Arthur Shurtleff to lay out new subdivisions, integrating the houses into the natural topography. 

Most were executed in the Colonial Revival or 

Tudor Revival styles, while some were infl uenced by the Queen Anne. The Draper Company 

won a series of awards for its model housing, 

including a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and at international housing congresses 

in 1905 and 1906. In addition to the companybuilt dwellings for Draper Plant staff, Hopedale 

Village includes several mansions constructed 

by members of the Draper family and others associated with the business, which, in combination with the workers’ housing, convey the social and economic stratifi cation of the Village. 

These include the Joseph Bancroft House (ca. 

1870, remodeled 1910); Warren W. Dutcher 

House (ca. 1868); the William Lapworth House 

(ca. 1875, remodeled 1890s); the Charles Roper 

House (ca. 1890); and the Eben S. Draper II 

House (ca. 1925).

Around 1887, Warren Manning was hired 

to redesign the Hopedale Village Cemetery, 

which had been established in 1845 as part of 

the utopian settlement. Manning also designed 

the Parklands, an extensive park that surrounds 

the Hopedale Pond. Its naturalistic landscape includes native and specimen trees, a rustic trail 

system, a bathing beach, and bathhouse. It encompasses 273 acres, including the Pond, and is 

not only a signifi cant village amenity but also a 

testament to the Drapers’ unusually sophisticated approach to the design of their mill village. 

Other public grounds include the Town Park, 

which was established by the Drapers around 

1890 to accommodate active recreation, and the 

Adin Ballou Memorial Park (ca. 1900), which 

occupies the 1⁄2-acre former site of the spiritual 

leader’s house.

In addition, the Drapers and others associated with the Company funded the construction 

of numerous high-quality, architect-designed 

civic buildings. These include the Richardsonian Romanesque-style Town Hall (1886-87), 

which originally housed municipal offi ces, a library, meeting halls and commercial space. The 

Romanesque Revival-style Bancroft Memorial 

DUTCHER STREET

FREEDOM STREET

HOPEDALE STREET

HOPEDALE STREET

ADIN STREET

MENDON STREET

DUTCHER STREET

DUTCHER STREET

INMAN STREET

BEECH STREET

PARK STREET

TAMMIE ROAD

JONES ROAD

PROSPECT STREET

FREEDOM STREET

SOWARD STREET

NORTHROP STREET

GAYLE ROAD

PR O GRESS ST R E ET

HOPEDALE POND

HOPEDALE POND

BANCROFT PARK

THE PARKLANDS

HOPEDALE

 CEMETERY

CHAPEL

SOCIAL

UNION STREET

PEACE STREET

HOPE STREET

DRAPER

DEPOT

DENNETT ST

JONES ST

WILLIAM STREET

FREEDOM STREET

LAKE ST

HOP E STREET

CEMETERY

STREET FITZGERALD DRIVE

PIERCE STREET

DEE CT

HOPEDALE STREET

MALQUIN DRIVE

GREEN STREET

HIGHLAND STREET

DANIELS STREET

Figure 6: Hopedale Village Historic District – Draft – Not to Scale.
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 39

mission provided support and assistance to all of these sites 

and facilities in the form of coordination, funding, and the 

development of interpretive programs and exhibits. In addition to continuing its support and assistance, staff from 

the Commission offer guided walks and other interpretive 

programs from these locations.

Blackstone Valley Visitor Center, Pawtucket, RI

Located immediately across Roosevelt Avenue from 

Old Slater Mill Historic Site and Museum, the Blackstone 

Valley Visitor Center is the southernmost visitor services 

facility in the valley and augments the current visitor experience at Old Slater Mill by providing a regional context. 

The fi rst-fl oor visitor center includes a small theater space, 

open exhibit/ program space (including a large fl oor map 

depicting the Blackstone River Valley), public restrooms, 

and an information desk. A small café/ shop on the fi rst 

fl oor adjoining the exhibit/ program space is operated by 

the Old Slater Mill Association. The visitor center building 

is owned by the City of Pawtucket, and the visitor center 

itself is maintained and operated by the Blackstone Valley 

Tourism Council. This building also houses a bus station, 

private offi ces, city department offi ces (Planning and Redevelopment), and classroom and administrative space leased 

by Salve Regina University.

Blackstone River State Park including Kelly House, 

Lincoln, RI

Owned and operated by the Rhode Island Department 

of Environmental Management, Blackstone River State 

Park encompasses 150 acres including segments of the 

Blackstone River Bikeway, walking trails, and a canoe portage. The park also contains historic resources including a 

well-preserved three-mile segment of the 1828 Blackstone 

Canal and tow path, the Captain Wilbur Kelly House, and 

archeological features associated with Old Ashton village. 

The park is located immediately across the river from the 

Ashton Historic District and is linked by a bridge. The Captain Wilbur Kelly House is operated as a museum featuring 

exhibits on the region’s transportation history including the 

canal, railroad and highways. Visitor information is available on all Blackstone Valley historical sites and attractions. The Blackstone River State Park is one of the key 

sites along the Blackstone River Bikeway, with a visitor 

center and bikeway trailhead co-located at a highway rest 

area along U.S. Route I-295. The Commission has provided 

funding and technical assistance in preserving the Blackstone Canal segment and in developing the Blackstone 

Library and the Draper Memorial Church / Hopedale Unitarian Church were constructed in 1898. The Drapers were 

also responsible for the construction of three schools; the 

Renaissance Revival-style Central Fire Station (1915-16); 

the Colonial Revival-style Hopedale Community House 

(1923), intended to be a social and civic center for the 

town; and the Harrison Block (1889), a 3-story commercial building.

Like the villages of Slatersville and Whitinsville, 

Hopedale remained a “company town” well into the 20th 

century. The Draper Corporation remained in business until 1967, when it was purchased by Rockwell International, 

which continued to manufacture textile equipment until the 

plant was closed in 1980.

Other Mill Villages

Remnant mill villages continue to dot the Blackstone 

River Valley landscape. Interwoven among the agricultural 

hill towns, they are not as intact or complete as the mill villages highlighted above. However, these remnant industrial 

nodes contribute to our understanding of the true scale and 

scope of industrialization in the Blackstone River Valley. 

In Massachusetts, these villages are found at Blackstone, 

Fisherville, Manchaug, New England Village, Quinsigamond Village, Rockdale, and Rogerson’s Village, among 

other locations. Among these villages in Rhode Island are 

Berkeley, Lonsdale, and Harrisville.

Visitor Resource Areas

The visitor resource areas described in this section 

were strategically developed or refi ned to complement the 

efforts of the Corridor. In that context, each of these facilities interprets a different facet of the Blackstone River 

Valley’s history and functions as a gateway to a particular 

resource or geographic area within the valley. The Com40 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

River Bikeway and provides operational and programmatic 

support at the Kelly House.

Museum of Work & Culture, Woonsocket, RI

The Museum of Work & Culture is housed in a rehabilitated textile mill building located in Woonsocket’s Market Square Historic District. The building is owned by the 

city of Woonsocket. The museum, which is operated by 

the Rhode Island Historical Society, interprets the story of 

French Canadian immigrants who left Quebec to work in 

Woonsocket’s mills and factories. The museum offers interactive exhibits, fi lms, lectures, and other programs and 

provides brochures, guidebooks, and other information 

for visitors to the Corridor. The Commission has provided 

funding and technical assistance in developing the museum 

and its exhibits and provides operational and programmatic 

support.

Blackstone River & Canal Heritage State Park 

and River Bend Farm, Uxbridge, MA

Blackstone River & Canal Heritage State Park encompasses about 1,000 acres in the towns of Uxbridge and 

Northbridge and is owned and operated by the MA DCR. 

The park property conveys a strong rural character with its 

rolling hills, wooded areas, and former agricultural fi elds. 

At the southern end of the one-mile towpath trail is the 

1852 Stanley Woolen Mill, a 5-story, wood-frame textile 

mill in private ownership. Rice City Pond, a holding pond 

created with the construction of a dam in 1865-69, is located at the northern end of the towpath trail. Three sets of 

water-control structures that supported the operation of the 

canal were recently restored.

A trail leads to Goat Hill Lock in Northbridge, where 

one can see the components of a relatively intact canal 

lock. At Plummer’s Landing in Northbridge, the archaeological remains of a landing basin and trading house are 

visible, along with portions of a canal lock. The best-preserved lock on the Blackstone Canal is located in the town 

of Millville and is owned by the MA DCR.

The River Bend Farm Visitor Center is located within the 

heritage state park in a rehabilitated barn at the former Voss 

Farm and is the southernmost visitor facility in the Massachusetts portion of the Corridor. The visitor center houses 

an exhibit on early settlement and agriculture and provides 

information about trails, picnic areas, canoe launches and 

other programs available at the park and throughout the 

Blackstone Valley. The Commission provided funding and 

technical assistance in the development of the visitor center 

and continues to offer visitor programs.

Worcester Blackstone Visitor Center, Worcester, MA

Originally intended to be located in part of the former 

Washburn-Moen wire factory in the Quinsigamond section of Worcester, the Worcester Blackstone Visitor Center 

was under development when the effort was interrupted by 

a catastrophic fi re in March 2010 that destroyed the most 

historic portion of the building. It was being developed in 

partnership with the Worcester Historical Museum (which 

planned to move its offi ces and exhibits there), the Worcester County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the City 

of Worcester. The site is located near Route 146, Interstate 290, and the Massachusetts Turnpike, as well as the 

Blackstone River Bikeway. The facility would have served 

as the northern gateway to the Corridor. The building has 

been condemned and will be razed. Planning continues for 

a Worcester visitor center, either at the original site or in 

another location.

Natural Resources

Much of the biological information cited below was developed by others for the Blackstone River watershed or 

basin, which does not precisely correspond with the boundaries of the study area. The resource base of the watershed 

provides an adequate overview of what one may expect to 

fi nd within the Corridor boundary for the purpose of this 

evaluation.

Geological resources

Topography

The Blackstone River Basin is located within two major 

physiographic regions, the New England Upland Region 

and the Narragansett Basin. Topography ranges from the 

low hills and plains of less than 200 feet above sea level 

in the Narragansett Basin (located in the southern portion 

of the Blackstone River Basin) to elevations ranging from 

300 to over 1,000 feet above sea level in the New England 

Region (located in the northern portion of the Blackstone 

River Basin).

Soils

The soil profi le in the Blackstone Valley is typically fi ne 

deposits (fl ood plains only) underlain by glacial outwash 

or till, and bedrock. The fi ne deposits are a loose mixture 
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 41

of clay, silt, and sand that may or may not be sorted. The 

outwash and till are dense heterogeneous mixtures of clay, 

silt, sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders.

Prime farmland

Prime farmland is determined by soils that have the best 

combination of physical and chemical characteristics for 

producing food, feed, forage, fi ber, and oilseed crops, and 

are also available for these uses.41 According to the USDA 

Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), there are 

approximately 51,000 acres of prime farmland within the 

Corridor boundary – 36,000 acres in Massachusetts and 

15,000 acres in Rhode Island. Nearly 30,000 additional 

acres within the corridor are identifi ed as Farmland of 

State-wide Importance, defi ned as lands that fail to meet 

one or more of the requirements of prime farmland, but are 

important for the production of food, feed, fi ber, or forage 

crops.42

Water resources

The hydrological source of the Blackstone River is 

located at an elevation of 1,300 feet on the slopes of Asnebumskit Hill near Holden, Massachusetts, from which 

it travels south into Rhode Island and eventually empties 

into Narragansett Bay. The headwaters of the river – wetlands and brooks feeding into the river stream – are found 

throughout the city of Worcester and beyond, many of them 

now buried into culverts. The Blackstone River is joined by 

four major rivers, in addition to many smaller tributaries. 

Along its way the river drops a total of 430 vertical feet and 

passes through the second and third largest population centers in New England – Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island, respectively. The Blackstone River 

drainage system is one of the seven major river systems in 

the Northeast. The watershed supports over 1,300 acres of 

ponds, lakes, and reservoirs.

A number of large wetlands areas are present in the 

Blackstone River Basin. Most consist of forested wetland 

and scrub-shrub wetlands systems dominated by red maple. 

Wetlands with extensive emergent marsh or wet meadow 

are rare. The most extensive emergent marsh system is the 

Valley Falls (Lonsdale) Marshes on the Blackstone River in 

Lincoln and Central Falls, Rhode Island. Diverse emergent 

marsh/ wet meadow systems have also developed on the 

Blackstone at the Rice City, Fisherville, and Manville Dam 

41 United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation 

Service.

42 Ibid.

impoundments, and at the Lackey Dam impoundment on 

the Mumford River.

Biological resources

Vegetation

In forested areas, commonly occurring species include 

red maple and white pine; white cedar and black spruce 

are also evident. Common understory species include high 

bush blueberry, arrowwood, common elder, swamp azalea, 

skunk cabbage, and cinnamon fern. In scrub/ shrub areas, 

common species include speckled alder, willows, sweet 

pepperbush, high bush blueberry, dogwoods, arrowwood, 

skunk cabbage, and cinnamon fern. In emergent wetland 

areas, common species include cattail, purple loosestrife, 

woolgrass, soft rush, pickerelweek, smartweeds (Polygonum spp.), reed canary grass, phragmites, other aquatic 

grasses, sedges, rushes, bulrush, spikerush, and burreed. In 

open water, pondweeds (Potamageton spp.), water-shield, 

water lilies, and wild celery are common native species. 

The aquatic weed Eurasian water milfoil is common in eutrophic ponds, lakes, and impoundments.

Riparian habitat in the Blackstone River basin is primarily wooded. Forested riparian areas are typically dominated 

by red maple. White pine and oak are common in drier locations. Common species in scrub-shrub riparian habitat 

include alder, dogwoods, willows, and buttonbush.

Undeveloped upland (non-wetland) habitat in the Blackstone River basin is primarily forested. The basin lies in 

the Central Hardwoods-Hemlock-White Pine forest region. 

This region is a mixture of species common to more northerly or southerly areas. Until it was wiped out by the Chestnut blight late in the 19th century, American chestnut was 

the dominant tree. Currently the major species include red, 

black and white oaks; hickories; gray, yellow, and black 

birches; and maple, with red maple occurring at wetter 

sites. White pine and hemlock are the dominant evergreens.

Old fi elds and other open land are typically colonized 

by shrub species such as staghorn sumac, gray birch, and 

white pine saplings. Although some pasture is present, 

grassland habitat that is not grazed or regularly mowed is 

very rare.

Wildlife

The Blackstone watershed provides habitat for hundreds 

of wildlife species. A few such as striped skunk, coyote, 
42 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

cowbird, and blue jay, have thrived under human occupation. Many of the remaining species, however, have undoubtedly declined in population and range. Some species 

such as the spotted turtle and eastern box turtle may be in 

serious decline and in danger of being extirpated from their 

remaining habitat in the basin.

Many of the basin’s mammals, amphibians, reptiles, 

and birds strongly depend on wetland or riparian habitat. 

Among the more common large mammals in the basin are 

white-tailed deer, raccoon, striped skunk, Virginia opossum, eastern cottontail, gray squirrel, red fox, coyote, and 

woodchuck. Species with an even greater territory occasionally noted in the basin include fi sher, moose, and black 

bear.

Common amphibians include redback salamander, redbacked newt, eastern American toad, gray treefrog, northern spring peeper, green frog, and wood frog. Populations 

of many amphibians are in decline in the United States, but 

their status in the Blackstone Valley is unknown. Common 

reptiles include snapping turtle, painted turtle, and eastern 

garter snakes.

Waterfowl habitat provided by the Blackstone basin is 

nationally signifi cant, since the area has been identifi ed as 

an important fl yway for migratory waterfowl by the North 

American Waterfowl Management Plan, overseen by U.S. 

Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). The principal nesting 

species are mallard, wood duck, and Canada goose. Black 

duck also breeds in the basin, but nesting populations have 

declined signifi cantly during the last several decades, as is 

the case elsewhere in the northeast. Migrants include mallard, wood duck, Canada goose, black duck, mallard and 

black duck hybrids, green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, 

pintail, American widgeon, common and hooded mergansers, buffl ehead, scaup, common goldeneye, grebes, ringnecked duck, and American coot.

The mainstem Blackstone and its major tributaries presently support an improving recreational warm-water fi shery throughout the basin and a put-and-take stocked trout 

fi shery in selected portions, e.g., the lower Blackstone 

River. Wild brook and brown trout exist only in the upper 

reaches of the basin, where suitable coldwater fi sh habitat 

and high dissolved oxygen levels persist.

The dominance of the current fi sh population by more 

pollution-tolerant species (e.g., white sucker, golden shiner, and carp) indicates that the Blackstone River system is 

still somewhat degraded by a combination of water and/or 

sediment quality. However, the presence in good numbers 

of less tolerant species (largemouth bass, yellow perch, and 

blue gill) demonstrates strong potential for the development of a more balanced fi sh community as habitat continues to improve.

Special Status Species

The Massachusetts and Rhode Island Natural Heritage 

programs have identifi ed numerous sites in the Blackstone 

River basin that are known or thought to provide habitat for 

rare or protected plants and animals. With the exception of 

transient peregrine falcons, no federally listed species occur in the study area.

Socioeconomic Environment

Land Area

The study area coincides with the existing boundary 

of the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National 

Heritage Corridor and encompasses 550 square miles (approximately 400,000 acres) in all or part of 24 communities 

located in south-central Massachusetts and northern Rhode 

Island.

Land Use Types and Trends

Cities such as Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Woonsocket, Cumberland, Lincoln, Central Falls, 

and Pawtucket, Rhode Island are primarily urban in nature, 

containing high levels of dense development. Many of the 

towns along the river are more suburban in nature, with 

relatively sparse residential development and areas of open 

space. Many have small town centers or villages characteristic of the mill villages established during the early industrial period.

In Massachusetts, the Central Massachusetts Regional 

Planning Commission (CMRPC) has developed a 2020 

Smart Growth Strategy for Central Massachusetts. Its analysis defi nes the Massachusetts portion of the Blackstone 

Valley as encompassing the central (Worcester) and southeast subregions (Blackstone Valley) of its central Massachusetts planning region. Based on CMRPC’s analysis of 

land use change, the southeast subregion lost roughly 2,500 

acres (21 percent) of its farmland between 1985 and 1999. 

The area also lost approximately 7.3 percent of its forested 

lands. During this same period in central Massachusetts, 

the communities in the Blackstone Valley saw the largest 

increase of land used for new residential development in its 

history, with a nearly 44-percent increase in land devoted to 
CHAPTER TWO : HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND RESOURCE DESCRIPTION | 43

this use and a nearly 19-percent increase in land converted 

to commercial development. CMRPC has identifi ed this 

area as focal point of signifi cant growth and development 

in central Massachusetts.

In Worcester, what little farmland remained in 1985 had 

declined by 50 percent by 1999; forested areas declined by 

just under 12 percent. During the same period, commercial, 

residential, and industrial land use expanded by approximately 6, 7, and 10 percent, respectively.

As of 1999, about 19,200 acres of land were permanently protected from development in the Massachusetts communities within the Blackstone Valley (Source: CMRPC). 

According to a recent analysis completed by Massachusetts 

Audubon in its “Losing Ground” series, nearly 1,700 additional acres of land were protected between 1999 and 2005. 

In contrast, during the same time period, Massachusetts 

communities within the Blackstone Valley lost over 2,800 

acres of open space to development. As of the end of 2010, 

about 22,600 acres of land were permanently protected 

from development in the Corridor’s Rhode Island communities (Source: RI DEM).

Population & Trends

Based on projections made by the U.S. Census for 2009, 

the overall population of the Corridor is roughly 590,000. 

Because only a portion of the cities of East Providence and 

Providence are included within the Corridor boundary, 

their population fi gures were adjusted accordingly.43 Given 

this adjustment, the distribution of population between the 

Massachusetts and Rhode Island segments of the Corridor 

is roughly even. If the total populations of East Providence 

and Providence are factored in, signifi cantly more people 

reside in the Rhode Island segment of the Corridor.

According to the U.S. Census projection for 2009, 

Worcester, Massachusetts is the largest city in the region 

(estimated population of 182,000), followed closely by the 

city of Providence in Rhode Island.

The fastest-growing communities within the Corridor 

boundary are Douglas, Upton, and Mendon in Massachusetts, and Lincoln and Cumberland in Rhode Island. The 

population of these Massachusetts communities has grown 

by over 40 percent between 1990 and 2009, while Cumberland and Lincoln grew by about 20 percent during the 

same period. The cities of East Providence, Pawtucket, and 

43 For purposes of calculating the population within the BRVNHC, it was assumed that 10 percent of East Providence’s population and 20 percent of Providence’s population would be accounted for in this analysis.

Woonsocket were estimated to experience modest declines 

in population between 1990 and 2009 (less than 1 percent 

to just over 3.5 percent).

According to demographic projections prepared by 

the CMRPC, the Blackstone Valley is expected to be the 

fastest-growing area in central Massachusetts in terms of 

population over the next several decades.

The 1999 median household income in the Blackstone 

River Valley as calculated by town ranged from a low of approximately $23,000 to a high of $78,000. During the same 

period, per capita income ranged from $11,000 to $35,000. 

Valley-wide the average median household income was 

$55,000, and the average per capita income was $23,000.

The percentage of families in each town living below the 

poverty line ranged from a low of 1.8 percent to a high of 

nearly 26 percent. The high concentrations of families living under these economic conditions occur in the region’s 

cities, predominantly located in the southern portion of the 

Corridor.

Based on the fi ndings of the 2000 U.S. Census, there 

are approximately 284,000 housing units in the Blackstone 

River Valley. At that time the average median house value on a per-community basis was estimated at $145,000. 

About half the housing units were owner-occupied with 

the remaining half being rental units. The average contract 

rent at the time was about $560. Median housing values 

and contract rents fl uctuated a great deal among individual 

communities, from a low of $ 88,000 to a high of $240,000 

and a contract rent range of $460 - $700.

Statistics related to median housing values for 2008 in 

Rhode Island and for 2009 in Massachusetts reveal a significant rise in housing values. In Rhode Island communities, 

median housing values for 2008 ranged from $142,000 to 

$290,000. In Massachusetts communities, the 2009 median 

housing values ranged from $294,000 to $395,000.

Unemployment Rate

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – August 2010, the unemployment rate hovered around 8.8 percent of the civilian labor force in Massachusetts and around 

11.8 percent in Rhode Island. The unemployment rates for 

Worcester and Providence counties were slightly higher 

than their respective state rates during the same period. 

At that time, the unemployment for Worcester County in 

Massachusetts was 9.4 percent and in Providence County, 

Rhode Island it was 12.8 percent.
44 | BLACKSTONE RIVER VALLEY SPECIAL RESOURCE STUDY

Economic Sectors

The nature of the economies and employment in the different cities and towns along the Blackstone River varies. 

Providence and Worcester are large cities and have major 

employment bases. Many of the small towns in the Corridor serve as suburbs of Worcester and Providence, and to 

a lesser extent, distant suburbs of Boston. Worcester is by 

far the most intensively urbanized and developed area on 

the Massachusetts end of the Corridor. Providence, like the 

smaller Rhode Island cities of Woonsocket, Central Falls, 

and Pawtucket, possesses areas of both urban and suburban development, and a signifi cant number and variety of 

employers.

Valley-wide, the actual number of jobs remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2007, but began to show 

signs of decline due to the recession in 2008. In Rhode Island, outside of Providence, the principle employment sectors included manufacturing, health care, and retail. The 

manufacturing sector showed a marked decline between 

2002 and 2008 with a loss of approximately 11,000 jobs. 

As manufacturing declined, other sectors outside Providence made modest gains, including construction, fi nance 

and insurance, health care, and food and lodging. In Providence, the dominant employment sectors are health care, 

public administration, and education.

In Massachusetts, outside of Worcester, the principal 

employment sectors included manufacturing, retail, health 

care, and construction. As was the case in Rhode Island, 

manufacturing in the Corridor’s Massachusetts communities declined between 2002 and 2008, though not as steeply, losing about 150 jobs. The manufacturing sector in the 

Blackstone River Valley in Massachusetts is considerably 

smaller than that sector in northern Rhode Island. Sectors making modest gains during this time included retail, 

health care, educational services, arts, entertainment and 

recreation, and food and lodging. In Worcester, the primary 

employment sectors were health care and education, followed by manufacturing and retail trade.