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Sustainable Tourism Development Articles
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 Blackstone Valley
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.
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