is inside the Blackstone River State Park Visitor Center in Lincoln, Rhode Island. One of two in the hall, this is the northern display. It reads:
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Welcome to the Blackstone River State Park Visitor Center and the John H. Chafe Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. The American Revolution began in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The Industrial Revolution began, here, in the Blackstone River Valley.
You are within easy walking, biking or driving distance of the
very "footprint" of that revolution. If you have the time now it is an easy walk from here to the Blackstone River (½ mile in each direction). We hope you take the time to visit throughout the Blackstone Valley and explore this past and witness an exciting future as the people of the Blackstone Valley create a 21st century vision for this historical River.
In the American Revolution, the United States won its political independence from Great Britain. In the Industrial Revolution that followed, the United States achieved its economic independence from the world. Its workshops and factory floors were built on natural and artificial water power sites - waterfalls and mill dams - along a forty-five mile corridor from the headwaters of the Blackstone River in Worcester, Massachusetts to the mouth of the River at Narragansett Bay in Providence, Rhode Island.
In its course to the Sea, a half dozen other streams bolster the flow of the Blackstone as it tumbles some 430 feet down dams made to harness its power.
Capturing nearly every inch of this drop to run the mills of nearly fifty factory villages along the way, the Blackstone became "America's Hardest-working River," from 1790 to 1950.
The inspiration for this remarkable stroke for economic independence began in partnership between English immigrant mill developer, Samuel Slater, Providence businessman and philanthropist, Moses Brown, and a host of local mechanics and craftsmen, led by members of the Wilkinson family of Pawtucket. Within a few decades following Slater's arrival, in a 30-mile radius of Providence, some 170 mills had sprung to life, mostly in the Blackstone Valley, mostly by people who Slater trained. These mills, in secluded enclaves on the River, required their own support system of factory-owned houses for the workers, stores, schools, and churches.
Entire families were recruited to live and work here, first from local marginal farms, later, as the enterprise expanded they were drawn from Ireland and French Canada and, eventually from an arc of places sweeping across Europe from Scandinavia and the plains of Russia through the Mediterranean countries of Portugal, Italy, Greece, Armenia, Syria, and Lebanon.
What began as an introductory technology for producing fabric made of cotton and wool expanded into other fields of manufacturing such as machine tools, steam engines, and rubber products. The isolation of these villages made necessary an ever-unfolding progression of transportation developments that refashioned Indian trails and cart paths into turnpikes, the Blackstone Canal into the Providence and Worcester Railroad, and colonial thoroughfare roads into state highways and interstates.
The floor map of this Visitor Center features the Rhode Island portion of the River - from the Thundermist falls of Woonsocket to
industry's birth at Pawtucket. While current generations have grown to know the River as the border and boundary of towns, the map accurately reminds us of its role as the Valley's main street. This use was not so much as a transportation path, for it never was, but rather as an energy transmission line that created hundreds of lobs in the mills that faced each other across the River.
The massive beams of this building and its walls of stone reflect the common materials of the mill villages here that mimic the massive castle towns along the rivers of Central Europe.
The Center also celebrates the area's latest linking feature, the bikeway and the heritage of intermodal travel. Bikes, canoes, kayaks, and 'old fashioned' walking allow the visitor to appreciate in the closest ways possible the remarkable transformation of a vital water way from a nearly lost industrial river to a regained recreational
environment, once again flourishing with fish, plants, and wildlife in the midst of one of New England's densest and most diverse urban and suburban populations.
Descriptive text courtesy Al Klyberg, Curator of the Captain Wilbur Kelly House.
Half a dozen images are presented alongside the text: Portraits of Moses Brown and Samuel Slater; a historical photograph of immigrant mill workers; a colored etching of mills on the Blackstone River; and two modern day color photographs - Captain Wilburn Kelley House Museum and Slater Mill Historic Site.