About the Council
A place is
more than a chunk of real estate
or a dot on a map. Without
culture, lore, history, and
natural beauty a place doesn't
really exist. It's nowhere.
The
Blackstone Valley has all that
in spades. Only there was a time
when people seemed to forget,
even some people who called the
Valley home. A few decades ago,
you could say the region was
suffering a hangover, the result
of a long party called the
Industrial Revolution. The mills
that once employed so many stood
vacant, the jobs shipped
overseas. The Blackstone River,
the power source for the
factories, was polluted by the
waste they had produced and
choked with litter and trash.
Downtowns turned to ghost towns
as residents moved to the
suburbs and did their shopping
at malls that looked exactly
like the malls in Minnesota and
California and everywhere else
in America.
All that took an economic toll.
For a long time the Blackstone
Valley struggled with
unemployment numbers well above
those found in nearby Greater
Boston or Providence. Worse, it
became anonymous, a place you
travel through on the way to
someplace else.
And that's what gave birth
to the Blackstone Valley
Tourism Council. A handful
of true believers, led by
Bob Billington, the agency's
founder and long time
director, set out to change
the region's future by
inviting tourists to come
visit. At the same time,
they hoped to renew a sense
of pride among those who
call the region home. They
wanted folks to remember the
struggles and triumphs of
their immigrant grandparents
who worked the mills, to
once again see the river as
a rushing, roaring, natural
waterway, and to see the
region's farms as something
more than future space for
more sprawl.
"We wanted
to let the world know what the
Blackstone Valley is all about,"
says David Balfour, who chairs
the tourism council's board of
directors.
Read more
about the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council - it's
story, mission, history,
activities and
accomplishments...
