While most of my blogs have focused on the interconnectedness between outdoor recreation and historical preservation and awareness, especially in areas that have helped restore towns or villages, such as in Cold Spring, New York, never did I imagine that these could be employed in an urban setting to potentially revitalize a city. That city, rich in Native American and America’s industrial past, is Paterson, New Jersey.
The area in focus is the Great Falls District, designated as a National Historical Park by the Obama Administration four years ago, in March 2009. The Falls are the second biggest east of the Mississippi River, behind only Niagara Falls. The area, which eventually included Paterson, was once home to the Lenni Lenape Indians, part of the Algonquin-speaking tribe, who named it Acquackanonk, meaning in the native tongue a place in a rapid stream where fishing is done with a net. After Dutch and English settlement in the latter part of the 17th century, Euro-American visitors were attracted to the Great Falls and its surrounding bucolic landscape.
The scenery, however, would rapidly change not too long after American Independence. Henry David Thoreau would have admired Paterson’s natural and enchanting beauty but certainly lamented the changing landscape as it gave way to industrial soot and grit. The leading figure calling for change was Alexander Hamilton, when he established the Society for Establishing Useful Manufacturers as America’s first Secretary of the Treasury in 1791.
Hamilton believed that the United States could only retain its political independence from Great Britain by establishing a vibrant industrial base which would ensure its economic independence and eventually compete for world markets. Hamilton’s vision led to building a “raceway” system of tiered water channels that harnessed the power of the Great Falls, a spectacle of water cascading over rugged cliffs and dropping precipitously 77 feet into the Passaic River Gorge, for nearby mills and factories. While Hamilton envisioned Paterson as the new nation’s first planned industrial site, places like Pawtucket, Rhode Island and Lowell, Massachusetts developed much more rapidly.
Nevertheless, Paterson became a prominent industrial city in the early 19th century and helped set the stage for America’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The city’s factories produced a multitude of products, starting with New Jersey’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill in 1793. Subsequent innovations and production included continuous roll paper (1812), Colt revolver (1836), the Roger’s Locomotive Works (1837), the Holland Submarine (1878), and in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, silk production, of which Paterson became famous and was thus aptly termed, Silk City. Throughout its history, the city witnessed an influx of peoples from around the world, particularly of European descent. They represented cheap labor for the factory owners, whose insatiable demand for profits was limitless. Hazardous working conditions, child labor and low wages created a volatile relationship between labor and capital which culminated with the explosive silk strikes of 1913.
As the twentieth century rolled on, Paterson’s industrial might slowly declined so that by the 1960s most industries shut their doors and closed down, throwing thousands out of work and from which the city and its residents are still recovering. Previous efforts have been made by the state to promote economic development, such as the creation of a special economic zone with lower sales tax rates, but such measures have not gone far enough. However, with the creation of a new historical park, city officials are hopeful that the promotion of Paterson’s history and present, with its current diversity of Spanish, Middle-Eastern, and African-American peoples, will encourage urban renewal, private and public investment, and job creation. The end result, hopefully, will strike a balance to avoid gentrification. The idea is to utilize once again the power of the Great Falls and the Passaic River, albeit for different methods and purposes. This time, instead for private interests and profit, it will serve the public interest in the form of environmental and urban renewal so that Paterson is finally recognized as a significant historical and cultural icon.
By promoting Paterson’s cultural and historical legacy, city officials want to attract more visitors and tourists. New Jersey has pledged $10 million to improve the site and work is set to begin on an amphitheater, using the falls as a backdrop for events and concerts. Plans to implement a recreational component will enhance the region’s economic value, such as the building and restoration of walking paths and hiking trails as well as offer kayaking and canoeing adventures. Recent studies underscore the symbiotic connection between outdoor recreation and economic vitality to a community and region in the form of cash infusion and job creation.
Paterson mayor Jeffery Jones has supported the idea of a recreational plan and was recently kayaking on the Passaic River so as to generate ideas of how best to utilize the surrounding area for recreation. Stabilization of sediments and the river banks and the construction of fishing piers and kayaking docks would permit easy and safe river access. Reintroducing water activities would follow in the tradition of the Lenape Indians who once canoed, fished, hunted, and established their villages near the river.
Once revered for its natural beauty and industrial might but also lamented for its industrial collapse and decay, Paterson is again on the verge of change. By combining its rich, and at times dark, history with revitalization in the form of park creation and outdoor recreation will, it is imagined, spur a sort of economic activity and spark an urban renewal by placing Paterson back on the map in the public consciousness, as well as a worthwhile public attraction for both learning and recreation. More importantly, it will highlight and showcase Paterson’s neglected past and New Jersey’s vital role, for better or worse, in the development of early American industrialization.