Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Hamilton's planned industrial city at the Great Falls
1791
Great Falls of the Passaic, Paterson, New Jersey
FirozAnsari · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The Passaic drops seventy seven feet here, and Alexander Hamilton wanted the power. As Treasury Secretary he helped charter the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures in 1791 to build a manufacturing town at the falls, and hired Pierre Charles L'Enfant, fresh from laying out Washington, to design the canals that carried water to the mills. The raceways ran in three tiers down the hillside and were still turning wheels a century later. Paterson is the only American city that exists because the federal government decided industry had to start somewhere.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: historic site
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