Fitchburg, Massachusetts
A Short History of Fitchburg
Nipmuc homeland on the Nashua River. A 19th-century industrial juggernaut nicknamed the “Paper City.” A mill town that lost its mills and had to decide what to become next. Fitchburg has reinvented itself more than once, and the story is not finished.
Before the City
Long before any of this carried the name Fitchburg, the land along the Nashua River belonged to the Nipmuc people. English colonists pushed into the rugged, hilly country in the 1730s, calling it “Turkey Hills” and farming it as part of the town of Lunenburg. In 1764 the settlement broke away to become its own town, named for John Fitch, a prominent resident who helped win its incorporation.
The Mill City Rises (1800s)
The Nashua River wrote Fitchburg’s future, because its falls could turn machinery. Thomas French built the city’s first paper mill in 1804, and over the next century the town became a powerhouse churning out paper, machinery, tools, textiles, and firearms. The turning point came in 1845, when the Fitchburg Railroad, driven by industrialist Alvah Crocker, linked the city to Boston and the rest of the country. Goods that once moved by wagon now moved by rail, and the city’s rise was locked in.
Railroads, Granite & the Hoosac Tunnel
The city’s reach ran west through the Hoosac Tunnel, a nearly five-mile rail bore through the Berkshires finished in 1875. It was cut using the Burleigh Rock Drill, a machine designed and built in Fitchburg, so a piece of this town literally helped carve a path through a mountain. The money from that golden age raised grand Victorian buildings, from City Hall to the stately homes along Highland Avenue, many of which still stand.
A City of Immigrants
The mills needed workers, and the workers came in waves: Irish, then Finnish, French-Canadian, Italian, and many more. Fitchburg grew into one of the most important centers of Finnish-American life in the entire country, with its own Finnish-language newspaper, Raivaaja, and gathering spots like Saima Park. The city also has a fiercer history than its quiet streets suggest. Before the Civil War it was an active stop in the abolitionist movement, and residents helped shelter people escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.
Decline & Reinvention
Then the engine stalled. Like other New England mill cities, Fitchburg watched its paper and textile work move south in the mid-20th century, and the population slid from its 1950 peak. The decades since have been one long act of reinvention, leaning on anchors that outlasted the mills: Fitchburg State University, founded in 1894 as a state teacher-training school, the Fitchburg Art Museum, and the wooded trails of Coggshall Park. And as it did a century ago, a wave of newcomers, this time a large and growing Latino community, is reshaping the city once more.
Sources: City of Fitchburg; Encyclopaedia Britannica; U.S. Census Bureau; Fitchburg Historical Society.