Pawtuxet River Watershed and Mills Tour

Pawtuxet River watershed topographic map The river flows 12.3 miles and drains 232 square miles into Narragansett Bay. Source: Pawtuxet River Water Authority

The “Pawtuxet,” named by the Native Americans as “the river of many falls,” had numerous cataracts due to the underlying hard crystalline rock of the area producing an average fall of 4.7 feet per mile and it never ran dry! It had everything needed for cotton production. By 1840 textile manufacturers occupied the 17 most suitable waterpower sites along the Pawtuxet River.

The river’s watershed covers 232 sq mi in central Rhode Island. The river has 588 miles of tributaries which flow east to eventually enter Narragansett Bay at Pawtuxet Village on the Cranston/Warwick line. Starting at elevations of 500 to 600 feet in the west and 800 feet in the northwest the river flows as two major branches, the North and South branch which join at “Riverpoint” in West Warwick at about 300 feet above sea level. There they contain enough flow to power large textile mills. The river descends about 250 feet within five miles through Coventry, West Warwick and Warwick. Over 15 very large cotton mills were built on this stretch in the 1800s. Most of the buildings are still present.

From the beginning of occupation many small dams were built to provide water power for grist and sawmills. Virtually all of these dams still exist although the small mills are all gone. The map in the Watershed image shows the 167 dams as black squares on the rivers. The red dots are the mill sites on this tour.

The Mill Tour Route Image shows the shortest route to drive the 12.4 miles of the tour starting at the Pontiac Mill in Warwick. Of course you can drive it in reverse or do any portion of it as desired. More detailed images of the lower river and branches show the relatively large drops in elevation along the way which provided the vast water power needed to run the thousands of textile machines in the large mills.

For a driving tour with CD narration that is more mill village oriented see The Villages of the Town of West Warwick: A Self-Guided Tour available from the Pawtuxet Valley Preservation and Historical Society, 1679 Main Street, West Warwick.

Rhode Island Water Power--An 1832 Census of Manufactures noted the great advantage of Rhode Island rivers for manufacturing. “The Blackstone, Moshassuck, Woonasquatucket, Pawtuxet…more steady in their volumes than those of the western country, and descending, in their short courses, an elevation of from two to four hundred and fifty feet to the tide waters of the bay and sound, furnish, with their tributaries, innumerable cascades, and a power of propelling machinery almost incalculable in amount. The operative capacity thus offered has been improved by human art, in some instances, to the extent of constructing artificial works for the retention of superabundant waters during the winter and spring freshets, to be again turned into the river in the summer and autumn. Many streams which, with their natural flow, would drive the works upon them only ten or eleven months of the year, have been thus made to operate them throughout the year. The power thus of the labor of more than twelve thousand horses, working eight hours in each day. The amount of water power still unoccupied is very great. With such a redundancy of this natural agent, the more expensive one of steam has been, so far, very little used, and only under peculiar circumstances of location and business.”