12.20.99
The Blackstone Valley Century -- 100 Years of Highlights

• 1900
  New forms of transportation were linking up the Blackstone Valley's isolated mill villages as the 20th century began. Small-town dwellers whose life was once defined by how far they could walk discovered trolleys could take them from Lincoln to Woonsocket and trains could carry them to Providence.
  
  In August, the descendants of Samuel Slater sell William Slater Co's mill, houses and equipment in Slatersville for $100,000, ending the founding family of the New England textile industry's involvement in the business. The new owner promptly cuts the workforce from 700 to 200.
  
  
• 1910
  The success of the valley's textile mills drew immigrants from all over the world to the Blackstone Valley. According to the 1910 census, the 41 percent of North Smithfield's population had a foreign-born parent and more than one-quarter were born in another country.
  
  
• 1914
  The valley's immigrant communities were showing that they had come to stay. In 1914 Woonsocket's French Canadians built a new stone church in their city. St. Ann's still stands today.
  
  
• 1927
  In Woonsocket, many French-Canadian Catholics resisted attempts to downgrade French language and culture in the Providence diocese, with thousands gathering for a rally in St. Louis Park in September. But in the end, the threat of excommunication by the Vatican quelled the resistance.
  
  
• 1934
  Saylesville and Woonsocket were ripped by riots Sept. 11-12, when owners of Manville-Jenckes mills in those towns tried to bring in strikebreakers during a national strike over textile industry wages. The National Guard was called in as thousands of workers attacked the mills and surrounding neighborhoods. One man was killed in Saylesville, two in Woonsocket.
  
  
• 1936
  Thomas P. McCoy is elected mayor of Pawtucket and starts building a political machine that will dominate city politics for more than a decade.
  
  
• 1942
  McCoy stadium is completed.
  
  
• 1950
  On March 21, one of the valley's most distinctive landmarks, the Cistercian Monastery on Diamond Hill Road, is destroyed by a fire. The order moves to Massachusetts.
  
  
• 1953
  Martin Chase starts selling holiday ribbons from the Ann & Hope Mill in Cumberland. Applying the lesson of his experience selling clothing, he starts offering other items and by doing so invents -- many believe -- the discount department store.
  
  
• 1955
  Its rivers swollen by rains from consecutive hurricanes, Woonsocket's Social District is swept by flood waters that swamp streets Aug. 16-17.
  
  
• 1962
  Throughout the 1960s, work crews were cutting new paved paths -- such as Interstate 95 and Route 146 -- through the region.
  
  
• 1975
  To serve a burgeoning new market of suburbanites, developers were building shopping centers outside the urban core. In 1975, Lincoln Mall went up along Route 116.
  
  
• 1978
  Once a jewel in the crown of New England horse racing, Narragansett Downs and the sport of kings are in tough straits by the 1970s. The paddock path where gaily dressed riders once paraded horses for the day's races is, by 1978, a weedy ruin.
  
  
• 1981
  April 18-19 and June 21, the Pawtucket Red Sox win the longest game -- 33 innings -- in professional baseball history, beating the Rochester Red Wings, 3-2. Coming during the major league players' strike, the PawSox game attracts worldwide attention and presages the increasing popularity of minor league baseball in the 1990s.
  
  
• 1982
  A group of valley business owners create the Blackstone Valley Factory Outlet Association, which will give birth two years later to the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council.
  
  
• 1986
  The United States Congress creates the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, the second such corridor in the nation. The idea is to channel federal money through the two-state, multi-town zone to encourage local coordination of preservation and tourism programs.
  
  
• 1990
  Work begins in Lincoln on the massive multi-million-dollar Amica insurance complex off Route 116 and Route 146. The project transforms the town's small local industrial park into a regional center.
  
  
• 1991
  With the tiny city's finances shattered by the pressure of maintaining its school system, the state steps in and takes over the Central Falls school district in March.
  
  Pawtucket Mayor Brian Sarault, once considered a man on the move in state politics, is arrested June 12 on racketeering charges, as federal investigators charge he and two aides ran a bribe and kickback operation from City Hall. For the next year federal prosecutors and city lawyers would lead a parade of officials and contractors into court for prosecution or restitution. By the time it was over, 11 city officials or contractors were convicted.
  
  Raymond "Beaver'' Tempest Jr., whose father was a former second-in-command of the Woonsocket police department and the Providence County High Sheriff, is arrested for the 1982 murder of Doreen Picard. He is convicted in 1992. In 1993 his brother, Woonsocket police Lt. Gordon Tempest, is convicted of perjury for trying to cover up the crime. The convictions confirm the worst of the rumors that had surrounded the case for a decade: that some in the police department had helped cover up the crime.
  
  
• 1992
  Already having forsaken the horses for greyhounds in a bid to survive, Lincoln Greyhound Park stages yet another transformation and adds video gambling machines.
  
  
• 1999
  North Smithfield Town Administrator Kenneth Bianchi -- the dominant political figure in his town for more than a decade -- calls if quits after 22 years in one local office or another and takes a job with the state Turnpike and Bridge Authority.
  

A yearlong Providence Journal series about life in Rhode Island.
Produced in cooperation with the Rhode Island Historical Society.