Dispatch From Upper Falls - 26 Feet that Built a Village

In the 1700’s there weren’t too many sources of power available.  There was the power of human labor, the power of a horse or mule … and the power of moving water. During the 1700’s up and down the Charles River all sorts of mills sprouted up to tap into the power of the water.  

The key to extracting power from a river is a drop in elevation and the biggest drop over the entire length of the Charles River is at the falls in Hemlock Gorge – Upper Falls.   The bigger the drop, the more power is available, so that roughly twenty six foot drop as the river flows through Hemlock Gorge at Upper Falls was crucial.

The first mill at Upper Falls, a saw mill, was built in 1688 followed quickly by a grist mill and a fulling mill.  By 1800, there was a rolling mill, a snuff mill, a screw factory, wire mill, blacksmith and an annealing shop and Upper Falls was turning into an industrial center all powered by the water of the Charles.   From 1831 to 1855, the number of houses in the village jumped from 50 to 130 and Upper Falls was the center of Newton’s growth during that time. 

Steam engines were operating elsewhere in the early 1800’s but it took many years before they came into widespread use.   As late as 1869, only 50% of industrial power came from steam.   Here in Upper Falls though circumstances conspired to force the conversion to steam power in 1836 when upstream industrialists in Dedham diverted much of the river’s flow into the new Mother Brook to power their factories.   Upper Falls industrialist Otis Pettee scrambled and quickly installed steam power to keep his machinery turning.

In the latter half of the 1800s and into the 1900’s, the factories were primarily powered by steam but even then water power played a role.  Here’s an excerpt from a class paper that a 1908 Newton High School’s student wrote about the silk mill in her neighborhood.  Mary E. Warren wrote:

“The silk factory is situated on the Charles River between Needham  and Upper Falls and consists of a number of red brick buildings.  Although the factory is near the Charles River, only in the springtime is there enough water to run the mill.  For the remainder of the year steam is used.  There are about three hundred people employed here and most of them are foreigners …”.

In the 1950’s, the owners of the mill property relinquished their right to use the power of the river at Upper Falls back to the state of Massachusetts.  The turbine was removed from the mill complex and for the first time in 100’s of years, the power of the flowing Charles River was no longer used.

If you stand on top of the falls today and watch the flowing river plunge into the gorge it’s startling to realize, that in a very concrete way, that drop in the river and the flowing water built this entire village.

All of the information and photos were cribbed from Ken Newcomb’s “Makers of the Mold – a History of Newton Upper Falls”.