Last Friday, when we heard the weather forecast calling for stiffing heat and humidity all weekend, we had forecast Sunday as a beach day. But when we woke up this morning and saw winds topping 15 mph at the coastline, we said “Screw the beach and its 63-degree water. Let’s go to Lowell.”
Back in the 19th century, Lowell was a thriving mill town, the first and biggest of its kind in America. But when textile manufacturing moved south in the first part of the 20th century, Lowell fell on hard times for many decades, with sky-high unemployment and abandoned industrial blight. It has recently seen a cultural revival, with many artists fleeing Boston to set up shop in Lowell in the large brick converted mills that dominate the downtown.
We went to the Lowell National Historical Park, which is made up of various mill sites, and headed to the visitor center. “We’d like to take a tour,” I told the kindly Park employee behind the counter. She proceeded to tell us about a tour that involved taking a street trolley to a mill, touring a mill, then getting on a boat to tour the canals, going through a series of hand-operated locks, touring a gatehouse, touring a dam, getting back on the boat, interacting with a period-costumed mill girl, going through more locks, then boarding a trolley back to the visitor’s center. Total time: 2 hours and 15 minutes. Total ticket price: $8 a person. God bless the National Park Service.
We went to the designated tour departure spot at 11:30am, and it turned out we were the only people on the tour. Our tour guide was a young, chipper but very well-spoken woman who immediately plunged into the history of Lowell as a textile mecca: Its canals, its business magnates, its technology, and its workers. We boarded the trolley, which had 3 people to operate it and stop traffic as we rolled along the downtown streets.
At first I was daunted to be the only people on the tour, knowing that my full attention would be required for the next 2 hours and 15 minutes. Luckily, we’re both nerdy enough to be interested in things like 19th-century textile mills, so the in-depth explanation and tour of the water turbines and looms didn’t bore us to pieces. We boarded a boat piloted by a man who gave his safety spiel as if talking to a group of 20 eager tourists, and cruised along the canals. The first lock was operated by 3 people. The second lock was operated by 3 more people, and as promised there was a period-costumed mill girl who explained how one of the gatehouses have saved Lowell from being flooded several times. Total number of Parks employees who we saw on our tour: 12. I’ll reiterate the total ticket price: $8 a person. It was one of the best historical tours I’ve ever been on and probably ended up being cheaper than going to the beach.
Pictured below left is a loom room in Boote Mills, which featured scores of running looms that were so loud we were given ear plugs. Pictured below right is a dam on the Merrimack River made entirely of steel poles and plywood, as seen from a gatehouse.
