A Walk Through History

            If it weren’t for sheer boredom I may have never got to experience Lowell’s Canal Walkway. My friends and I did not know what to do one night, so we decided that we would go for a walk. We roamed around aimlessly and ended up finding the path that runs parallel to the canals that made Lowell a major player in the Industrial Revolution. It was calm and quiet as we walked down the path, the only noise was the sound of the rushing water. It contrasted with what the canals were originally used for. They used to be home to the textile factories that polluted the air with noise. The Lowell Canal System was enlarged and grew rapidly in 1821, at the very beginning of the American Industrial Revolution. This canal system was home to ten major textile mills and helped make Lowell one of the most widely known industrial cities of the time.

It was hard to believe that the water rushing past us was once part of something so big. These canals were the reason thousands of people moved to Lowell in search of a job and a way to help their family. Now they just seem to be something that is there, they have no purpose but to be observed and create beauty in this city.  Even the graffiti seemed to make this walk better. As you walked and looked at the ground you could read the phrase, “the creative adult is the child who survived.” Or the spray paint on the fence that read: ignorance. As we got closer to this particular graffiti it got harder and harder to read, because of the holes in the fence. This graffiti added to the atmosphere of the Canal Walkway, it made everything seem better. Even the heart engraved into the tree, which usually would have annoyed me, seemed like a work of art.

We were just going out for some fresh air and to find something to entertain ourselves, and we just happened upon this beautiful place. It seemed so strange that when a women walked by us walking in the opposite direction she asked if “it was safe up ahead” for her to continue walking. She said that she walked the path every night on her way home from work, but she was always worried. It did not seem like a dangerous place, it made us forget that we were still in Lowell, a city in which you are cautioned about walking around. Lowell does not have a reputation for being a safe city and when we moved into school our RA’s told us to make sure we stuck in groups when we walked around at night. It seemed so strange that we were still in that dangerous place, that we had not been transported somewhere else.

Continuing down the path, we saw panel with informational blurbs about the constructions of the canals, the mills, and the Canal Walkway. They give information on what was happening during the construction and on the improvements in the mills. One panel describes a newspaper article from 1848 and tells about the creation of the stone wall that runs along these great canals. He described it as, “a most splendid piece of workmanship.” The work on the canals intrigued everyone in Lowell at this time. Another panel gave diagrams of the turbines that powered the many mills that lined these canals and showed how improvements were made on them overtime.

We walked all the way along the canal, dodging spiders webs that seemed to be everywhere and getting bit my mosquitoes, which being allergic made the cold night worse for me, but we eventually came upon the Boott-Cotton Mills, a place I had been to many times as a child for field trips in elementary school. It was weird that this place made me miss home, it connected me back. These mills were a part of my childhood even if they were not close to home. In this building, along this canal, hundreds of people worked and produced fabric. There was once a working turbine that powered the entire building with just mechanics, there was no electricity involved. This canal was once someone’s life source, they depended on the water flowing give them work so they could support their families.

The canals in Lowell spread in many directions, and I decided to explore more of them. One Walkway runs parallel to Father Morissette Boulevard, making it less of a path and more like a sidewalk. I was disappointed because I was once again hoping for the feel of being transported somewhere else when adventuring along the Canal Walkways, but this branch did not give that vibe. It did bring me to the Wannalancit Mills. These mills, like the Boott-Cotton Mills are still giving tours, but a lot of it has been transformed into offices for UMass Lowell. Rationally I know that Lowell could not have preserved and changed all of its old mill buildings into museums, but it still saddened me that this piece of history had been mostly destroyed.  

When I revisited the Canal Walkway to take pictures I realized that it was not as magically as it once seemed. Cars were honking as students crossed the road when they were not supposed to, construction work was going on, there was a sense of chaos in this area that I had thought was serene.  I could now picture the loud textile machines that would be running further up the canal. The quote that I had wanted a picture of was washed away by the rain, the path seemed to have changed. But as I kept walking, moving away from the activity of the city, it still seemed to retain its charm. It was becoming a place for me to go and relax and get away from the stress of school.

But this path is part of history, and it is part of Lowell. People travel here to learn about the mills and the people that were apart of them. . A news article from the Lowell Sun revealed that the city got a grant to develop new parts of the Walk and to fix up the older parts. The Canal Walkway is a place people can look and remember what the center of life in Lowell was like almost 200 years ago. And the city of Lowell embraces it. They want people to learn about their city, they are still expanding. No matter where you are from in the United States, it is almost guaranteed that you will learn about Lowell’s role in the Industrial Revolution in a history class. Living here you seem to forget that the city placed such an important role in history.

Walking from East Campus to North Campus everyday does not show you the true heart of Lowell. Its times like our little adventure that connects us to the city. It helps us remember what we are a part of and teaches us more and more about the city. Our walk was just meant to get us out of our dorms, but it showed us what Lowell used to be and taught us some of its history.