Pawtucket Falls is a waterfall on the

Merrimack River The Merrimack River (or Merrimac River, an occasional earlier spelling) is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Mas ...

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...

. The waterfall and rapids below it drop a total of 32 feet in a little under a mile, and was an important fishing ground for the

Pennacook The Pennacook, also known by the names Penacook and Pennacock, were an Algonquian-speaking Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands who lived in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and southern Maine. They were not a united tribe but a netwo ...

Indians in pre-colonial times.

Etymology

''Pawtucket'' is an Algonkian word meaning "at the falls in the river (tidal stream)".

Use as boundary

This location was used as a benchmark for delineating the

Northern boundary of Massachusetts The northern boundary of the U.S. state of Massachusetts adjoins two other states: Vermont and New Hampshire. The majority of the boundary is roughly a straight line from the northwest corner of the state ( NAD27Franklin K. VanZandtBoundaries of t ...

, which was frequently disputed between the

Province of Massachusetts Bay The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in British America which became one of the Thirteen Colonies, thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III of England, William III and Mary II ...

and the

Province of New Hampshire The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later a British province in North America. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America, and was nam ...

. The issue was finally resolved in 1740, when it was decreed that the boundary run along a curved line three miles from the river between the ocean and a point three miles north of Pawtucket Falls, where the river begins to turn north. From there a line was to be drawn due west.Franklin K. VanZandt
Boundaries of the United States and the Several States
USGS Bulletin 1212, 1966

Canal and Dam

The existence of these falls as a barrier to travel along the river necessitated the construction of the

Pawtucket Canal Completed in 1796, the Pawtucket Canal was originally built as a transportation canal to circumvent the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. In the early 1820s it became a major component of the Lowell p ...

in the last decade of the 18th century. In the 1820s, the falls, the canal, and the

hydropower Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to Electricity generation, produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by energy transformation, converting the Pot ...

they provided led to the choosing of this site as America's first planned factory town, Lowell. Over the next 30 years, hydropower from the falls exclusively ran Lowell's numerous textile factories via the city's canal system. To maximize the

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...

the canals provided, increase volume, and regulate flow, a dam was begun at the top of the falls in the 1820s and was enlarged into the 1840s. The final structure, which exists in the same form today, is a stone dam topped with five foot wooden flash-boards, capable during much of the year of channeling the entire Merrimack into the canal system. The effect being the Pawtucket Falls are dry. When heavy flow tops the dam, the waterfall created, which is a fraction of the total loss in elevation of 32 feet, is referred to as the Pawtucket Falls.

References

External links

{{Merrimack River Geography of Lowell, Massachusetts Landforms of Middlesex County, Massachusetts Tourist attractions in Lowell, Massachusetts Waterfalls of Massachusetts

Etymology

Use as boundary

Canal and Dam

See also

References

External links