Woonsocket is the northern end of the Blackstone Valley in Rhode Island, right up against the Massachusetts line, and it has a character that sets it apart from every other New England mill town. In the late nineteenth century thousands of French-speaking families from Quebec came south to work in its textile mills, and by the early twentieth century Woonsocket was the most French city in the United States, with French-language newspapers, Catholic parishes, mutual aid societies and credit unions. The accent and surnames are still strong, and the city was nicknamed Little Quebec.
The history of that community is told in the Museum of Work and Culture, set in an old mill building, where reconstructed rooms and workstations show what daily life was like for the families who spent their lives at the looms. It does not hide the hardship, with long hours, low pay and child labour, but it shows too how the workers built their own institutions and held onto their language and faith. Several of the city's grand churches, with tall steeples and heavy stone, were built from the pennies of mill workers.
The Blackstone River drops over a series of falls through the city centre, and the old mill buildings along it, now partly empty or converted into apartments and offices, line the banks in long brick rows. The scene has a gritty beauty, with the river noise rising over the old roofs. Like much of this valley, the river was badly polluted by industrial waste, and the recovery in recent decades has brought fish back to the water.
For riders, Woonsocket is the finish or the turning point of the Blackstone Valley road. The approach follows the river through a string of old villages, past mill ponds, canals and small parks, on a road that is slow and broken by traffic lights. The scenery is gentle rather than dramatic, and the interest lies in the layers of history.
The city has fuel stations on its main roads and plenty of diners and bakeries, and the French-Canadian tradition lives on in meat pies called tourtière and in the sweet maple treats you find around the holidays. Winters are cold and snowy, and the road along the river can ice up. Spring and autumn are the best seasons, when the leaves and the water are at their best.