Fall River, Massachusetts

“ Samuel F. Durfee, Corporal; 28; Fall River. He resides in Fall River. He carries on the teaming business and is janitor of the G. A. R. Hall.
James McGuire, Corporal; 31; Fall River. Died several years ago.
George G. Grush, Corporal; 20; Fall River. In the employ of the Bell Telephone Company (long distance) . A very busy man when on duty; a genial companion when off duty. He resides in Fall River.
Charles S. Weaver, Wagoner; 20; Fall River. He went West; since then nothing has been heard of him.
Privates.
Althan, George; 18; Fall River. Dead.
Andrews, Thomas; 44; Westport. Dead. ”

“ The social conditions and labour problems of Fall River have long been exceptional. The mills supplement the public schools in the mingling of races and the work for Americanization, and labour disturbances, for which Fall River was once conspicuous, have become less frequent and less bitter, the great strike of 1904–1905—perhaps the greatest in the history of the textile industry in the United States—being marked by little or no violence. Fall River has become a “city of homes,” and tenements are giving way to dwellings for one or two families. ”

“ Fall River was originally a part of Freetown; it was incorporated as a township in 1803 (being known as “Troy” in 1804-1834) , and was chartered as a city in 1854. In 1861 it was increased by certain territory secured from Rhode Island, the city having spread across the state boundary and become subject to a divided jurisdiction. In 1902 the city received a new charter. Its manufactures amounted to little before the War of 1812. A disastrous fire occurred in 1843 (loss above $500,000) . In 1904 Fall River became the see of the Roman Catholic diocese of that name. ”

“ Fall River is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, and has good steamer connexions with Providence, Newport and New York, notably by the “Fall River Line,” which is much used, in connexion with the N.Y., N.H. & H. railway, by travellers between New York and Boston. The harbour is large, deep and easy of access. The city lies on a plateau and on slopes that rise rather steeply from the river, and is irregularly laid out. Granite underlying the city furnishes excellent building material ”

“ Antiquated Methods at Fall River.—The citizens of Fall River, Mass., have recently been aroused by a revelation of conditions prevailing in the central station house of that city. Because of the lack of modern detention quarters, children, women and men of all degrees of vice are crowded together in a common compartment. ”

“ In Fall River, where out of every one hundred women, forty-five are at work outside the home, three hundred and five babies, out of every one thousand born, die before they are a year old; while even in New York City, but one hundred and eighty-nine out of a thousand die. The natural location of Fall River should make it a very healthy city. ”

“ Fall River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow is nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring floods. ”

“ By far the greatest disproportion in the Falls exists between the height and great width of the falling sheet. The water is most thick and massy at the Horseshoe Fall, which gives one the most striking and vivid idea of creative power. In fitting positions in the gulf, with good incidences of light, the Falls look like a mighty torrent pouring down from the clouds. At the time of my visit, the wind drove immense fields of ice out of Lake Erie, with floating trees and other driftwood, but I never saw any vestiges of these below the Falls. ”

“ Nearly two centuries ago, in one of those heated religious controversies which occurred in a river settlement in Massachusetts, a young man and his wife felt themselves constrained, partly through a desire for greater liberty of thought and action, and partly from natural energy of disposition, to push away from the fertile valley and establish their home on one of those bleak hillsides which form the spurs of the Green Mountain range. ”

“ The meadow is almost entirely unfenced, and the river is fringed in all its windings with weeping elms, wild flowers and shrubs, while up toward the town the fields rise in slightly swelling terraces—forming a foreground to one of the most sunny and cheerful villages in Massachusetts. ”

“ The Hazardville Powder Works, one of the greatest gunpowder factories in the world, are beyond, and also Thompsonville, a prodigious maker of carpets, and then the boundary is crossed into Massachusetts. Just north of the line, the Connecticut River sweeps grandly around in approaching Springfield, built on the eastern bank, and spreading for a long distance up the slopes of the adjacent hills. It is a busy manufacturing city, with sixty thousand population and an important railway junction, where the roads along the river cross the route from Boston to Albany and the West. ”

“ There are no townships of unoccupied lands in Massachusetts, and where, a few years prior, a stream gushed out of a swamp, turgid with the colors of the leaves and roots steeped in its waters, new villages take the place of the swamp, and the stream is seen busy with the people grinding at the mill, while from each steeple another is visible; each school-house is within sight of its like, and the well-leaved trees scarcely conceal from the inhabitants of one village the white and green of the cottages of the next town. ”

“ West of the junction with State 15-B, the Snoqualmie River is crossed by US 10 over a concrete bridge. As late as 1934 men panned the sands below the bridge for gold. Many of the buildings in FALL CITY, 66.1 m. (389 alt., 400 pop.) , once known as The Landing, reflect the architectural taste of the eighties. Poultry raising, dairying, and truck farming are the basic activities. In Fall City is a junction with the concrete-paved northern branch of State 2 (State 2-Alt.) , an alternate route to Seattle. ”

“ There are many alluring drives in this neighborhood; few anywhere can compare with them. A more romantic trip than that to the Upper and Lower Falls of the Fraser River could hardly be imagined. Leaving the carriage, exploring the wood and descending into the ravine, a beautiful view is seen. The upper fall descends in two drops to a depth of two hundred and ninety feet, and the lower fall has a descent of one hundred and fifty feet. The Thou, Chute, Desbiens, and the Nearn Fall with its salmon leap, are favorite objectives for enjoyable driving excursions. ”

“ The thermometer at evening was at 55°, the sky almost overcast, and the barometer indicated an elevation of 4,400 feet.
26th.--Rain during the night, and the temperature at sunrise 42°. Traveling along the river, in about four miles we reached a picturesque stream, to which we gave the name of Fall creek. It is remarkable for the many falls which occur in a short distance; and its bed is composed of a calcareous tufa, or vegetable rock, composed principally of the remains of reeds and mosses, resembling that at the Basin spring, on Bear river. ”

“ The descent into the valleys is usually abrupt, being made by heavy rapids and falls; the Hamilton, from the level interior, in a course of 12 m. falls 760 ft. into the head of its valley, this descent including a sheer drop of 315 ft. at the Grand Falls, which, taken with the large volume of the river, makes it the greatest fall in North America. The rivers of the northern and western watersheds drain about two-thirds of the peninsula ”

“ The soil of Massachusetts is largely the result of glacial erosion and deposition. The harder ridges, overridden by the ice, were denuded of all soil; the debris of the granitic hills is too coarse and too new to invite cultivation. The Triassic valley of the Connecticut River gives flat lands of exceeding fertility, while river and lake deposits of worked-over glacial till furnish many alluvial plains of very rich land, but of limited area. ”

“ The finding of Judge Blaisdell of the district court in Fall River, worthy man as he may be, is of no sort of consequence here, and has no sort of influence or obligation over you. We would not be safe if in these great crises our lives hung upon the decision of a single man in a prejudiced and excited community. No, we walk away from Fall River, we come down to the broad seashore, we sniff the breezes of the sea, and here is freedom, here is right, here are you, gentlemen. ”

“ These, with other tributary ponds, cover about twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long, but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six 129 feet, thus being appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered around this admirable water-power. ”

“ The coast of Massachusetts is less rugged, but more varied. South of the granite headland of Cape Ann, the shores of Boston Bay are still rocky and irregular; but both shores of the great sandy curve of the Cape Cod peninsula, which, with Cape Ann, encloses the waters of Massachusetts Bay, are smooth and moulded by wind and wave. The coast again becomes rough around Buzzard's Bay, while the almost land-locked 6waters of Rhode Island have drowned the old river-system of that state. Opposite Connecticut lies Long Island, the only island of any considerable size along the entire Atlantic coast ”

“ Here, on the banks of the Missouri river, is destined to be one of the largest manufacturing cities of the west, with its gigantic water-power, that can be so easily utilized through its numerous natural and continual chain of falls, the largest being Great Falls, from which the town takes its name. ”

“ In terms of the overall good of the people of the metropolis and the Basin and the country, the water situation at Washington now and during the near future hardly bears a desperate enough aspect to warrant the sacrifice of much of the main flowing river to a reservoir which, like the freshwater estuary, could not be meshed with upstream needs but would serve only the urban areas at and below the Fall Line. ”

“ Paul was a straggling French village of some thirty families, a floating population of voyageurs and workmen, to which two or three independent traders had joined themselves. In the next years Americans arrived in increasing numbers. In 1846 a post-office was established, and in the year after a regular line of steamboats began to ply down river in the season.
The city at the falls was later in getting its start. The lucky citizen who preëmpted the land abreast of the falls on the left bank of the Mississippi did not lay out his town site of St. Anthony’s Falls till late in 1847. ”

“ The Great Falls of the Missouri are the grandest in all North America, those of Niagara excepted, and though inferior to these in volume of water, depth of descent, and awful grandeur, yet they are far more diversified and beautiful. These Falls are within sixty geographical miles of the easternmost range of the Rocky Mountains. Here the river, two hundred and eighty yards, or eight hundred and forty feet wide, is pressed in by a perpendicular cliff on the left, one hundred feet high, and extending for a mile up the river ”

“ They endure a little longer on horizontal beds, which must be cut back perhaps many miles up stream before the fall disappears, than on tilted beds, which must be cut down a few thousand feet at most to reduce them to base level. Falls on tilted beds are therefore of briefer duration than on horizontal beds, and are at any time proportionately rarer. On the headwater branches of a river where youthful features such as steep slope and sudden fall remain after the main river has a well-matured channel, we sometimes find many water-falls, as in the still young branches of the old Ohio. ”

“ With the lower Mississippi, the river has a total length of about 4200 miles, which is equaled by no other river in the world. The Missouri is a swift and turbid stream, navigable only by flat-bottomed steamboats. During the flood period in early summer it can be ascended to Great Falls, Mont., about 2300 miles from the mouth, but in low water navigation is suspended above the junction of the Yellowstone. At Great Falls the Missouri passes over a series of cataracts, descending a vertical distance of 350 feet in 16 miles. The highest falls are 87 feet. ”

“ Beyond the village extends a deep forest; while a little to the south sweep off the waters of the river, bespangled with green islands, until, gracefully expanding itself, a noble bend withdraws it from the view. It is at this point that the Missouri disgorges its turbid, heavy mass of waters into the clear floods of the Upper Mississippi, hitherto uncheckered by a stain. ”

“ The American Falls do not inspire this feeling in the same way as the Canadian. It is because they are less in volume, and because the water does not fall so much into one place. By comparison their beauty is almost delicate and fragile. They are extraordinarily level, one long curtain of lacework and woven foam. Seen from opposite, when the sun is on them, they are blindingly white, and the clouds of spray show dark against them. With both Falls the color of the water is the ever-altering wonder. ”