Just west of the center of Nashua, NH is an area of brick buildings and waterways that from 1823 to 1945 were part of a large-scale cotton textile manufacturer named the Nashua Manufacturing Company. Today, the primary buildings are luxury apartments, and the canal system that used to power the mill are part of a park.
A substantial portion of land, running from the old mill building near downtown to a brick gatehouse several miles to the west, and including the man-made canal that runs between them, was listed on the National Register (as a district) in 1987. All told, the district comprises an area of more than 600 acres, much of it falling within Mine Falls Park.
Although many similar mill buildings were constructed and operating in New England during the same time, the history of the Nashua Manufacturing Company canal and the mill building are interesting in that the power to run the mill was delivered not directly by an adjacent river (indeed, the Nashua River runs directly by the primary mill building, but the river in that area was not used to power the mill), but rather from a canal, hand dug beginning at a point several miles upstream. Providing power using the canal allowed a more consistent, steady, year-round delivery of water. The canal, gatehouse and delivery system (completed sometime near 1886) were considered to be state-of-the-art, and were considered to be quite an engineering accomplishment at the time.
Today, the canal (which draws its water from the Nashua River) still flows from the gatehouse near the Mine Falls Dam, through a man-made pond, just to the south of (and running approximately parallel to) the Nashua River for several miles. By the time the canal reaches it's east end in an area near the mill buildings, it sits nearly 40 feet above the level of the river below. The canal disappears at a point next to a road, flowing underground, beneath the road and a parking lot, directly underneath the former mill building (now the Clocktower Apartments), where the canal waters finally empty back into the Nashua River.
A plaque (located several blocks from the mill building on Ledge Street (N 42 45.418 W 071 28.388) mounted on a small granite block sits among several benches near the canal.
The NRHP listing for this district describes the location of the district as "Factory and Pine Streets", but due to changes over years, those two street no longer truly intersect. It is more accurate to describe the location of the old mill building as "situated on the Nashua River between Factory Street and Pine Street".
Coordinates for this waymark were taken from near the west end of the mill building, approximately where Factory Street and Pine Street used to intersect.
More information on the gatehouse can be found at (
visit link)