The river flows from northern Massachusetts into Rhode Island and has a natural waterfall not far from a navigable ocean ship channel. That made it a perfect location for an experimental mill, to see if the fledgling Americans could copy the British mill industry. Here Moses Brown, a Quaker and reformed transatlantic slave trader, gathered an English mill expert/ industrial spy, several inventors, blacksmiths, shipwrights and skilled craftsmen to build the first successful water-powered cotton-spinning machine in America. Here, America joined the Industrial Revolution.

The mill owners knew that the cotton came from slave-plantations and some later owners even invested in plantations while still claiming to be Abolitionists. (The Brown family founded the eponymous University here with slave trade money). The ranger at Slater’s Mill did an excellent job in describing this hypocrisy and the pros and cons of industrial capitalism, along with explaining the mechanics and the history of the mill company towns that grew up all along the valley, until electrification moved the mills south. Pollution from heavy dyes is still a problem as are the dams, but major clean ups have restored much of the riparian ecosystems, for birds, fish, plants, hikers, bikers and paddlers to enjoy. The entire area is interesting, with old shops, an Audobon park, and legacy industrial buildings.