Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Ghost of Pawtucket Falls

The song "Paradise" by John Prine goes "...and daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green River where Paradise lay.  Well, I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking, Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."  That song comes to mind after visiting what remains of the once great Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River.  I try to imagine explaining to the great Pawtucket sachem Passaconaway and his son Wannalancet that their "great falls" has been "hauled away". 
For an uncountable number of years before the arrival of Europeans, many Native Americans gathered at Pawtucket Falls each spring to reap the harvest of alewife, shad, and salmon swimming up the Merrimack River.  It was here, in present day Lowell, Massachusetts, that the river dropped 32 feet in about a mile.
The opening photo shows the dam that diverts the river's flow into a series of canals where the flow is used to generate electricity.  The pool of shallow water to the right leads to a fish ladder.

I wanted to experience the river below the falls, and after reading this post on KayaktheMerrimack's blog about paddling the area, I decided to give it a try.  I launched into Beaver Brook very close to its confluence with the river.  Paddling out of the brook, the mills of Lowell came into view (looking downriver)...
 
 
I headed upriver towards the foot of the falls and quickly arrived at the point where there wasn't enough water to cover the river's rocky skeleton...
 
 
The bridge in the distance is the University Bridge connecting the north and south campuses of UMASS Lowell.  This spot is about a mile below the dam.  Some flow was being released back into the river from the Northern Canal to the left . 
 
This jagged rock had a little more character than the rest...
 
 
I went ashore on a small islet in the middle of the river and recovered several pieces of trash and, sure enough, more Hooksett Disks.  The islet may have been just a shallow area before the dam was built...
 
Several campsites seen along the river brought to mind those long ago days when Native American wigwams, more likely, would have been seen.  This camp had a crowded clothesline after two days of rain...
 
 Enroute back to Beaver Brook, I encountered a fleet of resting fish catchers...
 
 
More trash was recovered at the brook's confluence and my catch was dried on its shore...
 
 
There were 17 recyclable containers (4 redeemable) and 88 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish consisting of bait tubs, plastic bags, a balloon, and 45 Hooksett disks.  YTD = 5279
 
So when did the great Pawtucket Falls the Native Americans knew die?  Europeans first "modified" the falls in 1796 when they built the Pawtucket Canal to float things around the rapids.  Then in about 1820 they built the first dam that must have been the coup de grace. 
Following my paddle and a walk across the School Street Bridge, I ended up at a McDonalds and devoured a Fillet of Fish sandwich.  Right across from the McDonald's parking lot where I dined stood a church with a historic look .  Once home I revisited John Pendergast's book The Bend in the River and read the following: "Passaconaway's wigwam was located at the Pawtucket Falls where the Pawtucket Congregational Church now stands at the corner of Mammoth Road and Pawtucket Boulevard."







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