Fall River
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city and port of entry of Bristol co., Mass., at the mouth of the Taunton river, where it empties into Mount Hope Bay, and on the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad; 49 miles S. of Boston. It is connected with New York City by steamers, and has a fine harbor capable of admitting the largest vessels. The stream called Fall River is the outlet of Watuppa lake, and has a fall of 129 feet in less than half a mile, affording excellent water power. Public Interests. - The city is built on high ground and covers an area of 42 square miles. The streets are well laid out and contain many handsome buildings, largely of granite, found in the vicinity. It is lighted by gas and electricity; has a waterworks system owned by the city, supplying 18,000,000 gallons dail daily from Lake Watuppa. Its educational institutions include the Durfee public high school, the Academy La Ste. Union des Sacrés Cœurs, Notre Dame College, Fall River Conservatory of Music, and a civil service school. There are also a public library, several circulating libraries, a State armory, and 50 churches, daily and weekly newspapers, and electric street railways connecting with neighboring towns. Business Interests. - Fall River is the largest cotton-milling city in the United States. The city has cotton goods establishments employing 40,000 persons and over $40,000,000 capital. Other important manufactures are machines and machinery, food preparations, clothing, woolen goods, metals and metallic goods, drugs and medicines, paints and dyes, cordage and twine, and clocks , watches, and jewelry, boots and shoes, brass products, rubber, sash, etc. In 1919 there prodwere 4 National banks. The exchanges at the United States clearing-house during the year ending Sept. 30, 1919, aggregated $ 108,228,000. History. The city was originally a part of Freetown , but was incorporated separately in 1803. Later it was called Troy, but its first name was restored in 1834. The city charter was granted in 1854 and in 1862 Fall River in Newport co., R. I., was annexed. Pop. (1910) 119,295; (1920 ) 120,485.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, Fall River was "the largest cotton-milling city in the United States," with 40,000 people in the mills and nightly steamers to New York. The cotton industry collapsed within a generation as mills closed or moved South; the city fell into state-supervised receivership in 1931, and the Fall River Line steamers ran for the last time in 1937. Population, given as 120,485 in 1920, has never returned to that level and stood at roughly 94,000 in the 2020 census, with a large Portuguese and Azorean community now central to the city's identity. The surviving granite mills have become apartments, outlet stores and museums, and the battleship USS Massachusetts has been moored at Battleship Cove since 1965; commuter rail to Boston, absent for decades, returned in 2024.
Written for this edition, 2026.