Mine Falls Park
Coordinates: 42°45′02″N 71°30′15″W / 42.75056°N 71.50417°W
Mine Falls Park is a 325-acre (132 ha) park in the city of Nashua, New Hampshire. Located in the heart of the city, it was purchased in 1969 from the Nashua, New Hampshire Foundation with city and federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) money. It is bordered on the north by the Nashua River and on the south by the millpond and power canal system.
The park encompasses 325 acres located on both sides of the Everett Turnpike. The name "Mine Falls" dates from the 18th century, when low-quality lead was supposedly mined from the island below the falls. In the early 19th century, the potential of the Nashua River to drive the wheels of industrial mills was recognized after the success of the Merrimack Canal, dug in the 1820s in Lowell, ten miles downstream from Nashua. In Nashua, workers used shovels and mules to dig a 3-mile-long (5 km) canal, which provides a vertical drop of 36 feet (11 m) at the mills. The first gates were built in 1826, and the gatehouse near Mine falls was built in 1886. All of the property was once part of a massive complex owned by the Nashua Manufacturing Company, which harnessed the river's flow for power in its mills downstream on Factory Street. The mills closed in 1948 and the owner Textron sold it to the Nashua, New Hampshire Foundation (a group of local businessmen). After that, the area had been used for various commercial purposes while the river itself suffered from severe pollution. In 1973 a visit from the Environmental Protection Agency's Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern (called "DOCUMERICA") caused the Mine Falls Park masterplan to be created in 1974. In subsequent years a regulation-sized soccer playing field was created by the reclamation of two sewage lagoons. In 1981 a new footbridge over the Nashua river canal was built at the end of Whipple Street, to allow access to the playing field area that was formerly only accessible by hiking from the path under the highway from the west, or the Factory street entrance from the Nashua Manufacturing Company complex in the east.
...
Wikipedia