Plans are afoot to make the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor a national park, a move that likely would bring added federal funding, federal staff and tourists to the historic valley that includes 24 communities from Worcester to Providence.
The National Park Service is in the late stages of preparing a final report on the future of the corridor scheduled for release in the fall, according to Edward F. Sanderson, chairman of the 25-member, two-state commission in charge of managing the heritage corridor.
Federal support for the corridor, created by Congress in 1986, is slated to expire in November 2011.
The park service is studying five options for the corridor’s future that range from leaving it the way it is without federal support to the most ambitious proposal – creating a national park whose highlights would be Slater Mill in Pawtucket and four mill villages: Ashton in Cumberland and Slatersville in North Smithfield, Whitinsville in Northbridge and Hopedale, the latter two villages in Massachusetts.
Congress will make the ultimate decision next year, but statements in support of the new national park are already arriving at the park service’s Boston office. “We’re seeing lots of letters of support and e-mails,” said Ellen Carlson, project manager for the Northeast region.
“Clearly, national parks are high-visibility destinations for travelers,” Sanderson observed, “so I would expect that the tourism efforts of a group like the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council would be increased.” Sanderson said visits to historical parks east of the Mississippi are on the rise because not everyone can afford to go out west to Yosemite or Yellowstone.
According to Sanderson (who also is executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission), “we hope that the members of the two-state congressional delegation will introduce legislation in January” to create the Blackstone River Valley National Park. Senators and House representatives from the two states support the idea, he said.
Options under consideration, according to an advance summary of the National Park Service findings contained in the service’s June newsletter, are:
• Create a national park only in Rhode Island.
• Create a national park spanning both states.
• Make the Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket a unit of the National Park Service.
• Make the corridor an “industrial heritage network” with limited technical and financial support from the federal government.
Creating a national park spanning both states is the option that corridor commissioners think is the best, Sanderson said. Public input received to date at four public sessions also supports that option, he said. Whether the valley becomes a national park or not, its designation as a national heritage corridor will remain in perpetuity.
Tricia Garcia, property manager for the River Lofts at Ashton Mill in Cumberland – a 193-unit apartment complex located in the mill village of Ashton and housed in a former Fiberglas factory – said a national park designation would do nothing but enhance the benefits tenants receive. “It would just build more of a sense of community and give more historic meaning to where people live,” she said.
Plans for the future of the heritage corridor have been in the works for the last 18 months, Sanderson said, and included a visit of academic historians in January, February and March. The historians found, Sanderson said, that the valley and its history are unique enough to warrant national park designation. They were especially impressed, he said, with the four self-contained mill villages in the two states, finding them of “great national importance” to the story of the nation’s industrialization. Scholars saw that the story of the industrial revolution “cannot be told as well anywhere else,” Sanderson said.
The National Park Service, according to the study summary, intends to designate a local nonprofit partner to work with individuals and organizations in the valley if it becomes a national park.
In preparation, Sanderson said, the corridor commission recently created an independent organization – the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Inc. – to fulfill this role and replace the current corridor commission. •
