Visitors to Lowell National Historical Park enjoy a boat ride on the Pawtucket Canal

GENERAL INFORMATION

The 1.5-hour Pawtucket Canal Boat Tour provides a rare opportunity for visitors to Lowell National Historical Park to travel down one of the city’s canals, which for many people will be the highlight of their visit. The tour schedule varies each season, but they generally start around Memorial Day and continue through Columbus Day. For the current schedule, visit the National Park Service’s Guided Tours web page.

Fee-based tickets are required for the tour. These can be purchased at the Visitor Center on the day of your visit, or you can make a reservation in advance online at Recreation.gov. Each tour is limited to 18 people. I took my tour on a Monday in mid-August and had no problem getting a ticket at the Visitor Center, but there were seventeen passengers on the boat, not far from being full. If you know for sure when you plan to visit, be safe and make a reservation. You can get the current ticket prices on the National Park Service’s official Fees and Passes web page for the park.

The canal tours are conducted in a modern motorboat. There is no top on the boat, and the tour remains in the open the entire time, so if avoiding the sun is important to you, be sure to wear a hat and apply sunscreen. Furthermore, the boats are not wheelchair accessible, but disabled visitors who can make it down three steps with assistance are welcome to attend. Collapsible wheelchairs can be stored on the boat.

Boarding the National Park Service boat for a ride on the Pawtucket Canal, Lowell National Historical Park

TOUR DETAILS

Depending on the season, the Pawtucket Canal Boat Tour begins at either the Visitor Center or Boott Cotton Mills. The tour guide gives a brief overview of the Lowell canal history, and then the group boards the Lowell trolley bus and rides to the Swamp Locks where the boat awaits. If the trolley is not operating, participants must walk to the dock.

Lowell trolley, Lowell National Historical Park

The tour proceeds upstream on the Pawtucket Canal to the Guard Locks and Francis Gate, the first of the three locks on the canal (Swamp Locks is the middle lock). The Pawtucket Canal was originally built to circumnavigate the Merrimack River’s Pawtucket Falls located on the northwest side of Lowell. The river, which begins in the lake region of New Hampshire, was used to transport lumber from the area to the shipyards of Newburyport, Massachusetts, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. Lumber could also be shipped down the coast to Boston, a journey of roughly 60 miles. The only problem was that boats could not get past the one-mile stretch of falls, rocks, and rapids that dropped 32 feet. Goods had to be unloaded just before the falls, carted a mile downriver, and then reloaded onto another boat, an obvious waste of time and money.

View of the Pawtucket Falls section of the Merrimack River in Lowell, Massachusetts

In 1792, a group of wealthy Boston merchants formed the Proprietors of Locks and Canals to build a canal around Pawtucket Falls. Completed in 1796, the result was a two-mile long canal that ran from just south of the falls to the east side of what was then the farming village of East Chelmsford (Lowell wasn’t incorporated as a town until 1826, and as a city until 1836).

Pawtucket Canal (click to enlarge)

In 1804, the Middlesex Canal opened, and it connected the Merrimack River directly to Boston (it started just a mile downriver from the Pawtucket Canal). This cut the distance of transporting goods to Boston in half, plus cargo could travel on the calm and controlled waters of a canal instead of on the open sea from Newburyport. Furthermore, while lumber was still needed for the shipbuilding industry in Newburyport during the first decade of the 1800s, in 1811 a fire destroyed the city, and the War of 1812 put a damper on trade, and thus the market for new merchant ships. As a result of these two factors, the Pawtucket Canal’s usefulness dwindled, and by 1820 it saw very little boat traffic.

When the war ended in 1815, wealthy mill owner Francis Cabot Lowell began looking for a place to build more mills. Realizing the potential of the little-used Pawtucket Canal as a source of water power, Lowell and fellow investors decided to focus their attention on developing East Chelmsford into an industrial center. The idea was to dig power canals—canals built for water power, not transportation—that branched off of the Pawtucket Canal, and used the Pawtucket Canal to keep them filled. Massive textile mills could then be built right along the edges. When canal-side real estate ran out, simply dig a new canal and put up more mills. By the mid-1800s there were approximately ten major mill companies and dozens of smaller ones operating in Lowell.

Francis Cabot Lowell died suddenly in 1817 from pneumonia and never saw the results of his ideas—or the city named for him—but his Boston Manufacturing Company continued on with the Lowell project. The first power canal built was the Merrimack Canal in 1823, and more canals were built in the following years. The Hamilton Canal opened in 1825, and within ten years the Lowell, Western, Lawrence, and Eastern canals were in operation. The Northern Canal, the last one built in Lowell, opened in 1848. This canal connected directly to the Merrimack River at Pawtucket Falls and was 100 feet wide, so it not only provided power for the mills situated along its edge, it provided 50 percent more water for the entire canal system. In all, there are approximately 5.5 miles of canals in Lowell.

To provide the necessary water on a reliable basis, two other construction projects were undertaken. First off, the original Pawtucket Canal needed to be widened and deepened, for while it was perfect for canal boats, more water was required to power the mills. A typical transportation canal of the time was around 50 to 80 feet wide and only 3-4 feet deep. The Pawtucket Canal was enlarged to at least 75 feet wide and 12 feet deep. This expansion ran from the Merrimack River to the Swamp Locks. All of this, as well as the original work on the canal, was done by hand, and mainly by Irish immigrants.

The second project was to create holding ponds where multiple canals came together, such as at the Swamp Locks where the Merrimack Canal (and later the Hamilton and Western canals) branched off of the Pawtucket Canal, and at the Lower Locks where the Pawtucket and Eastern canals diverged. This was accomplished by building the Swamp Locks Dam and the Lower Locks Dam, and then constructing gatehouses over the top of them to control the flow of water. If you look underneath either of the Swamp Locks Dam Gatehouse or the Lower Locks Dam Gatehouse, you will see many sluice gates. If all are open, most of the water continues down the Pawtucket Canal. If they are all closed, the water is diverted into the side canals. The entire canal system was still owned by the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, but instead of charging canal boats a toll, the company now operated as a water company. Mill owners paid for the amount of water they used, and the gatehouses allowed for the release of just the right amount of water at any given time.

Sluice gates of the Swamp Locks Dam Gatehouse on the Pawtucket Canal in Lowell, Massachusetts

The first stop on the Pawtucket Canal Boat Tour is the Guard Locks and Francis Gate where the Ranger gives a tour of the site, including the inside of the Francis Gate building. You can visit the lock on your own by either driving to Francis Gate Park or hiking the urban Riverwalk Ramble trail, but you cannot get inside any of the buildings unless you are on a boat tour.

3-D satellite view of the Guard Locks and Francis Gate

The building with the red lumber levers sticking out of it is a lockhouse that was built around 1881. A lockhouse is where the lockkeeper—the man who operated the lock—and his family lived. Underneath the building are the lock gates that control the flow of water into the lock chamber when boats need to pass up- or downstream. The red levers are used to open and close the gates. Another set of gates is located on the downstream end of the lock (these are out in the open, not covered by a building).

Lockhouse at the Guard Locks on the Pawtucket Canal in Lowell, Massachusetts

The second building on the lock is the Francis Gate, which was built in 1850 for flood protection. Allowing enormous amounts of water down the canal during heavy rain or spring snowmelt could flood the city and damage the mills. While the lock gates can stop the water when closed, at only 2 tons each there was doubt that they could hold back serious flood water. To protect against a failure, engineer James Francis came up with the idea to build a massive stop gate: a 20-ton wooden wall made of white pine that was seated in grooves cut into the granite walls on either side of the lock. The wall was held up by a thick, iron shackle, and when flood waters required that it be put in place, the shackle was cut, dropping the gate like a guillotine (it took 40 oxen to hoist it back up). It was used just two years after its construction with great success and again in 1936. In both cases, the standard lock gates broke.

Upstream side of the Francis Gate on the Pawtucket Canal in Lowell, Massachusetts

Downstream side of the Francis Gate on the Pawtucket Canal in Lowell, Massachusetts

Notice that there is an extra set of grooves cut into the granite. These were included so that more wooden beams could be dropped if needed. In 2006, flooding hit the area, and the city wanted to use the gate. However, it was ruled that it was too old and possibly rotten, so instead, iron beams were dropped into the second set of grooves to hold back the water. This was done by crane, and it took fourteen hours to get them in place. The beams are still piled off to the side just in case they are needed again.

Grooves in the Francis Gate where the wooden wall or beams would slide down to block flood waters, Lowell, Massachusetts

The third building, the brick structure to the side of the lock, is the sluice gate, or guard gate. If the lock doors were closed to allow boats to rise or fall to different levels of the canal, the excess water had to have someplace to flow, otherwise it would back up to form a lake, possibly flooding the farmland upstream. This excess water passed through the guard gate (the actual gates are at the lower level of the building and are not visible in the photo below).

Guard gate at the Guard Locks on the Pawtucket Canal in Lowell, Massachusetts

After departing the Guard Locks, the Pawtucket Canal Boat Tour returns back down the canal to the starting point at the Swamp Locks.

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