Federal Investment Leads and Leverages Private Investment in the Blackstone River Valley
by Robert D. Billington, Ed. D.
The Blackstone
Valley has been successful for two main
reasons: first, because of the
leadership and commitment of the people
involved in community rebuilding, and,
second, because of city, state and
federal coordination, and cooperation
with private sector investors which has
included cutting red tape and offering
reasonable tax incentives. The National
Park Service, through the National
Heritage Corridor Commission’s
concept of cultural heritage and
land-management planning, has helped the
Blackstone Valley develop an overall
regeneration plan. The plan encourages
coordinated, broads scale, Valley-wide
economic development, while preserving
its nationally significant industrial
heritage, historic buildings,
factory-rich landscapes and improving a
desecrated
environment. This type of regional
planning has proved to be a key
ingredient in luring the private sector
to invest in the future of a region such
as the Blackstone Valley.
The Blackstone River
Valley is unique. It played a ‘seminal
role in transforming New England, and
America, from a colonial landscape of
farmlands and forests to one of
riverside mills and urban factories.'
It’s the Birthplace of America’s
Industrial Revolution. According to the
US National Park Service, the Blackstone
Valley is ‘one of the Nation’s richest
and best preserved repositories of
landscapes, structures and sites that
recall a neglected era of the American
past: the age of industry.
The BlackstoneValley
is situated in New England, 300 km north
of New York City, 60 km south of Boston,
Massachusetts, and 16 km north of
Providence, Rhode Island. The Valley
encompasses two states, 24 communities,
and 150,000 ha of land. It is home to
450,000 people.
The Blackstone
Valley takes its name from the Reverend
William Blackstone, the first European
settler to make his home on the banks of
the river in 1635. The 60 km long
Blackstone River flows from Worcester,
Massachusetts, to the top of
Narragansett Bay in Pawtucket, Rhode
Island, dropping approximately 140 m
along the way.
Following William
Blackstone came farmers, and
metalworking artisans, mostly immigrants
from England. The Valley rose to
national prominence in 1790, when
English immigrant Samuel Slater built
the first successful water-powered
cotton-spinning mill in America. More
than any other single event this … can
be said to mark the birth of the
American Industrial Revolution and the
complete transformation of American
life, and character. He was barely an
adult when his work in America served to
sever the economic tie between America
and England, thus making America truly
economically and politically free.
The Blackstone River
drops 2 m per kilometer over its run
from Massachusetts to sea level in Rhode
Island. This unusually steep drop
provided Slater and his successors with
the ability to harness the Blackstone
for water power, to the extent that it
became known as the ‘the hardest working
river' in America. Because of his unique
understanding of manufacturing and
business, Slater went on to become known
as the Father of American Manufactures.
He and his partners established several
manufactories throughout southern New
England.
The Blackstone
Valley communities and their creative
people had the technology, knowledge and
ingenuity to capitalize on the energy of
the river, and this drove the US
economy. Hundreds of mills were built
throughout the Blackstone Valley after
Slater’s success. These enterprising
textile mills provided the underpinning
for the USA to become a world economic
leader. Immigrants flocked to the
Blackstone’s textile industry from all
over the world. They came to create a
new life in America, and to secure their
version of the American dream. They
first settled along riverfront villages,
in what are today the cities of
Pawtucket, Cumberland, Central Falls,
and Woonsocket.
