By William A. Davis, Globe Staff, 4/18/2001

PAWTUCKET, R.I. - It may be only 45 miles long, but the Blackstone River has influenced American life perhaps more profoundly than even such mighty streams as the Mississippi and the Ohio. For it was here, in the Blackstone River Valley, that the American Industrial Revolution began and the opening rounds were won in the second War of Independence: the country's struggle to end dependency on foreign manufactured goods and become self-sufficient.

On its journey from Worcester in central Massachusetts to the ocean at Providence, the Blackstone drops an average of 10 feet a mile, an ideal flow for the water-powered machinery of the 18th and 19th centuries. When water power was king, the river, which passes through 16 Massachusetts and Rhode Island towns, was lined with mills, each the hub of a self-contained community.

Today, the entire valley is a national park called the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, created in 1986 to preserve the valley's historic sites and foster its special character. Forever altering the appearance of the New England landscape, the mill villages strung along the Blackstone like beads on a necklace were models for others in the region.

The beginning was in Pawtucket, where, in 1790, an enterprising English immigrant named Samuel Slater developed the first machine in America to spin cotton thread, giving the country its own textile industry. The yellow clapboard Old Slater Mill, built in 1793, is a museum and part of the Slater Mill Historic Site that includes an early 19th-century stone mill and a typical artisan's cottage of the time.

As the valley's textile industry expanded, it attracted an ethnically diverse immigrant workforce. Woonsocket, an exception, drew its labor almost entirely from Quebec. By 1920, the Rhode Island city had some 40 textile mills and a population that was 80 percent French-Canadian, the highest in New England.

The story of the French-Canadians' struggle to preserve their language and culture while assimilating into American life and winning better working conditions is told at the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket. An interactive museum operated by the Rhode Island Historical Society, it includes recreations of vital community institutions such as the parish church, a parochial school classsroom, and a textile workers union hall.

The heritage corridor is an untraditional national park in which the federal government owns no land or resources. Instead, the National Park Service works with the state governments of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, along with local governments, historical societies, and environmental groups, to preserve the rich heritage of the Industrial Revolution but also to undo the damage that revolution did to the environment over two centuries.

The first river in America to suffer from massive industrial pollution, the Blackstone in the last decade or so has been transformed into a recreational asset, as have the remaining restored sections of the old Blackstone Canal. Completed in 1828, the canal was put out of business by the railroad 20 years later. The river is now used for canoeing and kayaking, and paths along the banks of both river and canal are much frequented by hikers, bicyclists, and birdwatchers.

An excursion boat, the Blackstone Valley Explorer, plies the river from spring through fall. It is based in Central Falls, R.I.

One of the most distinctive things about the Blackstone Valley is the sharp contrast between its industrial and rural landscapes. Traveling down Route 122, which runs south from the Mass Pike though the heart of the valley, you get the impression of a virtually continuous ''milltownscape.'' However, most of the old mills - many now converted to nonindustrial use - are in a strip between the river and the highway, which is also the main street of many towns. Often, a detour off the road will bring you almost immediately into a rural countryside that could be somewhere in Vermont.

South Grafton, Mass., for instance, has a cluster of former textile mill villages each named for the original mill owner - Fisherville, Farnumville, and Saundersville - that are now rather forlorn relics of a bygone age. But just an uphill mile or so inland is Grafton Center, founded in 1654 - an almost picture perfect colonial-era village with white-pillared houses, two high-steepled churches, and an inn clustered around a classic town green.

Grafton Country Store dates from 1806 and still sells some candy for a penny, the going rate when it opened. Also in Grafton is the Willard House and Clock Museum, housed in a 1718 saltbox cottage belonging to the Willards, a famous family of clockmakers.

A good place to get a feel for the way the river and canal related to each other and the landscape is at Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Uxbridge, Mass. The visitors' center is in an 18th-century farmhouse beside one of the restored sections of canal, which runs right next to the river.

A short walk from the center will take you to Stone Arch Bridge, where river and canal meet. Another trail leads to a ledge with a fine view of the river and valley. Here, tradition has it, the Native American chieftain known as King Philip camped in the 17th century while waging war against the\colonists who usurped his tribal lands.

Just off Route 122 in Uxbridge is the Crown and Eagle Mill building, an impressive granite and brick structure erected in 1826 that stands alone in its own grounds and looks like a French chateau. Restored after a 1975 fire, it is now a senior-citizen housing complex. Across from the Crown and Eagle is an unusual store, Wild Bird Gardens - housed in a handsome, brick 1830s mill - that sells birdseed, books, guides, and feeders but also gifts, gourmet foods, and more than 100 kinds of hot sauces.

There is a lot more to the Blackstone Valley than old mills, including more than a dozen farms and farmstands where you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, often with the option of picking them yourself. A great place for a nature walk is Purgatory Chasm State Reservation in Sutton, Mass., a series of three steep ravines that have trails running around, between, and over boulders and up to the chasm's rim. The reservation has a picnic area and a visitors' center.

The valley also boasts New England's largest collection of exotic animals, at the private, 300-acre Southwick Zoo in Mendon, Mass., with more than 500 animals representing 100 species.

This story ran on page 7 of the Boston Globe on 4/18/2001.

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.