Middlesex Canal Museum Art

See if you can spot Faneuil Hall!

WHERE IS UR PASSPORT DEAD MUSQUASH

I have a belly shirt and a pig on a leash!

HELLO I SEE U R BUILDING A CANAL!

Middlesex Canal!!!!!

 Story time!  Sometime last year, I went to this restaurant in Woburn with my fance food friends, and it was in the old Baldwin mansion.  I of course wanted to know if they were connected to any of the Baldwins I knew (the brothers Baldwin, and the best Baldwin, James) but it turns out this Baldwin was a dude who fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary war, and propagated an apple and was so into it that it was eventually called after him.  During this wikipedia dive, I found out that Baldwin was also the first superintendent of the corporation which built the Middlesex Canal. 

What the fuck is the Middlesex Canal, and why had Lizzie and I, the brilliant historians that we are, as evidenced by this blog, never heard of it? We went to the Middlesex Canal Museum to find out more.

The museum is in Billerica, by the Concord River, which served as the main water source for the canal.  (Horn Pond in the Wu was an ancillary source).  That dam in the first picture has existed in some form since the 1600s.  I made a dam pun to the fabulous volunteer staffing the museum, Neil, but he ignored it.  This was our first indication that Neil was a smart man. 

Post Revolutionary war, it was evident that a more efficient means of obtaining raw materials and shipping goods was needed, and the roads were either shit or non-existent, so a bunch of business bros were like "yo let's build a canal," and business bro #1 John Hancock was governor at the time, and they formed a corporation that sold private shares to finance it.  In a who's who of the revolutionary set, shareholders included ol' big signature himself, John Hancock, eventual Prezzes John Adams & John Quincy Adams, James Sullivan (of Sullivan Sq fame) and of course our apple bro Loammi Baldwin.  They broke ground in September of 1794, and all 27 miles of the canal, from Charlestown to East Chelmsford, were hand dug over the course of ten years.

The canal itself was generally only 3.5 feet deep, and in a practice called "not crossing streams" so they could control the level of the water, the canal didn't connect with any of the other water ways nearby, so they had to build aqueducts (8 total) to ensure smooth sailing over rivers like the Shawsheen and the Merrimack (parts of the giant aqueduct over the Shawsheen still exists).  There was some sweet lock action, too, to deal with changes in height in relation to sea-level. 

FUN FACTS:

Passage on the canal was not allowed at night, so there were taverns built, including the "Horn Pond House," by, you got it, Horn Pond, and Horn Pond itself had a little island on it that housed a dance hall and a bowling alley.  Woburn as always brought the party. 

Musquash, aka Muskrats, and other similar animals would eat the sides of the canal, so people were paid to kill them and bring in their little dead bodies.  RIP Musquash :(

Eventually there was a canal built which connected the Charlestown mill ponds to the Boston Harbor, which, at the time, was located by Faneuil Hall.  Guess what there's a street there now called CANAL STREET.

The canal shut down in 1853.  Railroads came along and were like "lol we operate in the winter how about you?" and the canal was like ":( no" and it quickly fell into disrepair.  Bridges were ripped down, and the canal filled in in parts.  Parts of it are under the Mystic Valley Parkway, and Boston Ave in Medford crosses the Mystic River where the canal did, but parts of it are still visible and walkable, including a stretch by the aforementioned Baldwin Mansion (which was moved across Rte 38 bc the original location was made into a parking lot, natch). The shareholders lost their money and the canal WAS PROMPTLY FORGOTTEN. 

Anyway, if you have a chance, go check out the museum.  Hopefully Neil will be on duty, because he was super knowledgeable, and had all the hot canal goss.  Plus there are EXCELLENT displays.  10/10 would recommend for Neil + Dioramas. Lizzie bought me a sweet canal mug and xmas ornament, so if you want to come over my house and look at those, maybe I will let you...

Tug and Pull, i.e. the Descent

 On the way down, the sun came out, and sweeping vistas dominated.  Our brakeman let us know that the locomotive taking our car down might have to do a little "tug and pull," to get us going, and said "get ready for the tug and pull," "you can't be standing up for the tug and pull" and I laughed a lot because I am a sad person with a juvenile sense of humor.  Tug and pull. Heh. The brakeman also continued to advise us to buy shit in the gift shop and eat some bad pizza, and also to buy the souvenir photo taken by the "cogarazzi" as our trip commenced.  Lizzie and I were both annoyed at the cogarazzi joke which we thought our brakeman had made up, but no, oh no, it is the real name of the overpriced photo company.  Lizzie and I both bought one. 

Mt. Washington Cog Railway Review:  A+ for gorgeous scenery.  A+ for trains, trains are fun. D- for capitalism.  C+ for puns.  A+ for the tug and pull.  Would ride again.

Mt. Washington Summit

WE MADE IT.  After a very challenging climb down three stairs, we made it to the summit, asked the guy manning the visitor's station a question, but he was super rude so being the intrepid explorers we are, we made our own way through the fog to the actual summit.  And dear lord.  There was a line to the actual summit, and it wasn't super long but there was this family of about 10 people who mistook the summit for an America's next top model photoshoot, and one woman was screaming instructions at the other people (OPEN UR EYES.  MOVE UR HIP UP ONE INCH AND TO THE LEFT) and ate up way too much time while the rest of us fought the urge to hurl them off the mountaintop in a sacrifice to whatever gods might be listening.  We were surrounded by misty clouds, and it was cold (who knew) and maybe the flip flops we were wearing were a mistake (a pre-teen lectured me about this for about 5 minutes as we climbed down the rocky slope.  THANKS MOM.  I GET IT.) but it was most excellent, and I'm so glad we didn't have to hike down.  Mt. Washington is on the Appalachian trail, and there's about 300 miles from Mt. Washington to the end of the trail, and we saw some pretty exhausted but excited hikers. 

XTREME WINDGUSTS

 This here is "Jacob's Ladder," where the trestle reaches it's steepest point.  Also, did you know that Mount Washington is subject to XTREME weather?  (FINALLY WEATHER FOR MY GENERATION).  (Actually, our brakeman told us he was XTREME and would like to ride the devil's shingle and we were like lol ok Eli you do you.)  Well because of the XTREME weather, (the highest windspeed not involved in a cycle was recorded here at 231 mph) the treeline ends about 5000 feet below where the treelines end on most mountains.  Weak-ass trees.

Mount Washington Cog Railway

Hi!  It's been a while!  So Lizzie and I had big plans to do a state trip to South Carolina and Georgia in early June, but all sorts of things went wrong, including delayed flights and mechanical issues on flights and rain and oh did I mention that my garbage boyfriend broke up with me via text message so when we finally did get there all I did was cry and watch bad TLC for two days (though I did get a tan, which is challenging for those of Irish descent--someone called me a "daywalker" which I think is a zombie reference?  Either way I'm in).  It was enjoyable for everyone and LIFE IS A RICH TAPESTRY.  In any case, Lizzie took me up to Mount Washington for my birthday, yay!  Neither of us had ever been to the summit (highest in the Northeastern US, 6288') so we went up the Cog Railway, which was built from 1866-1869 (or 'Colonial Times', according to our brakeman).

This cog railway, our brakeman told us, is the oldest in the US, and for a while, was the steepest at one point until the Swiss ruined it, like they ruin everything.  There's a coal driven train that goes up, but ours was bio-diesel, and therefore didn't have to stop midway up to waste thousands of gallons of water to make that steam business happen.  Yay!  Also, back in the day, workers at the top would ride slideboards they'd invented down the railway which they named "Devil's Shingles" which probably was an indication that it wasn't the best idea, as flying down a mountain at 62mph on a piece of wood maybe isn't super safe, and the slideboards were banned after an employee died in 1906.  Buzzkill.  Anyway, it's about a 45 minute slow ride up to the summit.

After one Desecrates, one Must Consecrate

 Before the dam was built to flood the valley and create the Wachusett reservoir, this stone church was built (1891) at the juncture of the Stillwater and Quinapoxet River, where they merged into the Nashua river.  Though homes, mills, and farms were lost to the purposeful flooding, the church still stands, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.  It's one of the most photographed landmarks in the region, and for good reason, as if you look very closely to where Lizzie is pointing, the walls are filled with incredible, stirring art.