The Moshassuck River at the North Burial Ground in
Providence. View is downstream as the river is about to head into a concrete channel underneath
Interstate 95.
The
Moshassuck River is a
river in the
U.S. state of
Rhode Island. It flows approximately 16 km (10 mi) from the town of
Lincoln to the city of
Providence. There are six dams along the river's length.
History
Moshassuck River near Charles Street, Providence
In 1636
Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, settled on the east bank of the river and was told its name by the local
Narragansett Indians. The name "Moshassuck" means "river where moose watered".
The river became very important during the
Industrial Revolution, powering numerous
mills and also connecting to the
Blackstone River to function as the lower section of the
Blackstone Canal. The southern end of the Moshassuck River was the center for the area's earliest mills in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries and the location of base-metal works and
textile factories in the nineteenth century. Today it contains several industrial buildings, such as the Fletcher Building, now used for retail and office space. Further north on the Moshassuck are the few remaining early-and-late nineteenth-century buildings of the Allen Printworks, a textile-printing operation. In Pawtucket along the river are the remaining structures of the Hope Webbing Company and the Lorraine Mills.
[, issued in 1981 by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission.]By the mid nineteenth century, the pollution in the Moshassuck River had become so bad from factories dumping both industrial and human waste into the water that Rhode Island's
cholera outbreaks of 1849 and 1854 were blamed on the state of the river. The first cleanup attempt on the river was started in 1897 by building sewers.
During the twentieth century, the river steadily lost its functions as an industrial and transportation artery. When Interstate 95 was constructed during the 1960s, a ¾ mile (1.2 km) section of the river was paved over, leaving the river underneath the road in a narrow concrete channel. The loss of industry along the river over the years has also done much to improve the quality of the water in the river, however as of 2005, it is still has the second highest
fecal coliform level (2,206 units per 100 mL) of monitored rivers in Rhode Island.
Course
The Moshassuck's source is an unnamed pond within the Lime Rock Preserve in
Lincoln, Rhode Island, north and west of the intersection of Wilbur Road and
Route 146. It flows southeastward through Lincoln and
Pawtucket toward
Providence, entering the city just east of
Interstate 95. It then proceeds southward to converge with the
Woonasquatucket River in
Waterplace Park to form the
Providence River.
Crossings
Below is a list of all crossings over the Moshassuck River. The list starts at the headwaters and goes downstream.
- *Wilbur Road (same crossing as RI 146)
- *Great Road (RI 123) (Twice)
- *Manchester Print Works Road
- *Mineral Spring Avenue (RI 15)
- *Smithfield Avenue (RI 126)
- *Interstate 95 (River underneath the road)
- *Branch Avenue (As river surfaces from underneath I-95)
- *Ramp from Branch Avenue eastbound to I-95 Northbound
- *Ramp from I-95 northbound to Branch Avenue
- *Steeple Street (U.S. 44 Eastbound)
Tributaries
The
West River is the Moshassuck River's only named tributary, however it has many unnamed streams that also feed it.
See also
