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The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor is a special type
of national park. It is a partnership park that stretches from the headwaters
of the Blackstone River in Worcester Massachusetts to the Narragansett Bay
in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1986, Congress officially designated the
Blackstone River Valley as the nation’s second National Heritage Corridor.
So what is it? It’s kind of a virtual park—a park where people
live, work and play—a living landscape. Networks of partnerships among
state and federal governments, local jurisdictions, historical societies,
environmental organizations, businesses, sports groups, even private landowners—working
together to promote and take care of those things that make the area so
special.
This heritage corridor effort is being coordinated by a Federal commission
made up of twenty people who represent the interest of local government,
as well as the heads of several key state agencies from both Massachusetts
and Rhode Island, and the National Park Service. The Blackstone Commission
is unusual among heritage areas in that it actively pursues seven big
priorities: heritage education, recreation development, ethnic and cultural
conservation, environmental conservation, historic preservation, land-use
planning, and heritage-based economic development. That’s a very
big agenda
The Blackstone River Valley illustrates a major revolution in America's
past: the Age of Industry. Evidence of the way people lived during this
turning point in history can still be seen in the valley's villages, farms,
cities and riverways - in a working landscape between Worcester, Massachusetts
and Providence, Rhode Island. In 1790, American craftsmen built the first
machines that successfully used waterpower to spin cotton. America's first
factory, Slater Mill was built on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket,
RI. Here, industrial America was born. This revolutionary way of using waterpower
and labor spread quickly throughout the valley and New England. |
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