Psst, mums the word, people.  Monday was the Equinox and the first signs of fall have come to New England.  Get excited!  This is what we live for!

In search of early autumnal color I went on Sunday to Newton Lower Falls across the footbridge and then down to the Cordingly Dam. It is a peaceful spot where you can position your head to see no sign of the busy highways that surround it. It is a fun trick to play, to imagine how it all once was a century or two or three ago.

Newton, Massachusetts itself was founded in 1630.  Newton Lower Falls along the Charles River became an early industrial village, a harbinger of the industrial age that would soon envelop Massachusetts. The first damn was built by John Hubbard and Caleb Church in 1704 to power their ironworks.  At the close of the eighteenth century many more dams and mills had been built.  With the coming of the nineteenth century Newton Lower Falls was a major industrial center known principally for its production of paper.

Like so many of the mill towns, Newton Lower Falls went into decline with the coming of the twentieth century.  Today, all that remains to remind us of this greatness is the small picturesque and restored area along Washington Street: offices at the old mill, some residencies, a gourmet wine shop, and (do I have to say it) a Starbucks, a feature Newton Lower Falls shares proudly with the Pantheon and the Spanish steps in Rome.

I was delighted with what I found there on Sunday.  The bridge is complex and intricate with its iron work and wooden base. The dam has an intriguing fish climb for the herring that come to breed there in the spring.  The falls themselves were producing just enough cascade to satisfy a photographer, and there I found a fallen tree displaying a delicate bouquet of color that brought with it the promise of intensity to come.

Figure 2 – Cordingly Dam at Newton Lower Falls, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.