Slater Mill Historic Site

The Visitor Information Center at Old Slater Mill is operated seasonally. Please see active exceptions to ensure that the visitor contact station is open for your visit.

Park Passport stamps are available here.

The Slater Mill is a historic water-powered textile mill complex on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, modeled after cotton spinning mills first established in England. It is the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in America to use the Arkwright system of cotton spinning as developed by Richard Arkwright.

The mill's founder, Samuel Slater, apprenticed as a young man with industrialist Jedediah Strutt in Belper, England. Shortly after emigrating to the United States, Slater was hired by Moses Brown of Providence, Rhode Island to produce a working set of machines necessary to spin cotton yarn using water power. Construction of the machines was completed in 1793, as well as a dam, waterway, waterwheel, and mill.

Manufacturing was based on Arkwright's cotton spinning system, which included carding, drawing, and spinning machines. Slater initially hired children and families to work in his mill, establishing a pattern that was replicated throughout the Blackstone Valley and known as the "Rhode Island System".

It was later eclipsed by Francis Cabot Lowell's Waltham System. The Slater mill and surrounding area were the site of early labor resistance. This included the first factory strike in the United States, which was led in 1824 by young women workers.