On School Street, mill housing has been turned into duplexes.

The Branch River mill villages of Slatersville and Forestdale are still centers of suburban North Smithfield.

They are so close to each other that they are sometimes confused.

Slatersville is home to a sprawling mill complex recently converted into 224 luxury apartments — The Halstead at Slatersville Mill.

Forestdale’s landmark stone cotton mill, the former Stamina Mills building, was destroyed by fire in 1977.

Gallery

See more of
Forestdale

Founded in 1807 by brothers Samuel and John Slater, Slatersville is known as the country’s first planned industrial mill village.

Forestdale’s mill came a few years later, but the village retains its own identity and history as a National Register Historic District.

Forestdale’s post office is in a former mill building on School Street. The Stone House, at 21 School St., was originally the office for a scythe works in Forestdale that produced sabers for the Union Army during the Civil War. Today it is a private residence.

A distinctive red schoolhouse built in 1877 is the home today of the North Smithfield Heritage Association. The one-room schoolhouse has two front doors, formed to make separate entrances for boys and girls.

But one of the historic legacies of Forestdale is not so charming. A 1969 toxic-waste spill at the former Stamina Mills site has been an environmental concern for years, and led to its designation as a federal Superfund site.

The mill, on the bank of the Branch River, was used for textile weaving and finishing from 1824 to 1975.

In 1969, a truck driver accidentally spilled an unknown amount of solvent during a delivery. In 1979, the state found trichloroethylene contamination in a community well that served 25 houses north of the site. Trichloroethylene also contaminated 18 residential wells. Municipal water was piped to the households.

Kayser-Roth Corp., the parent company of Stamina Mills Inc., was sued by the federal government and found liable for the cost of cleaning up the site. Kayser-Roth appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court before reaching a settlement in 2003 and agreeing to pay $7.2 million for the cleanup.

There were just four houses listed for sale in Forestdale last week, ranging in price from $219,000 for a two-bedroom stone ranch built in 1952 at 28 Litzen Rd., to $284,900 for an 1820 Colonial with an attached apartment on a 2.2-acre parcel at 850 Great Rd.

POPULATION:

(North Smithfield, 2000) 10,618

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE:

(North Smithfield, 2007) $307,500

INTERESTING FACT:

When the boundaries of the current town of North Smithfield were set in 1871, it was called Slater, but two weeks later, the name was changed to North Smithfield, according to the North Smithfield Heritage Association.

cdunn@projo.com