Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of 41°N, the publication of Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island.

The Blackstone River sometimes gets a bad rap.

Like many New Englanders, natural beauty and majesty weren’t the first things I thought of when I was first assigned to paddle the Blackstone River for a story a few years ago.

The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the Blackstone was once famous for changing colors depending on what dyes the mills that lined its banks were using at the time.

Today, efforts to restore the 48-mile river to its pre-Colonial conditions have made the river bucolic. The problem is getting there. There are not many safe access points on the Blackstone where people can get to the water to fish or hop in a boat.

On a scale from 1 to 10, Blackstone Watershed Collaborative executive director Stefanie Covino said she would rate access to the river at about a 4.

“If you want to do it, you could do it,” she said. “But man, do we have a lot of room for improvement.” 

I set off with Covino and a group of river advocates to kayak the Blackstone on a crisp September morning to learn more about access challenges on the river and efforts to solve them.

We started at one of the best access points the Blackstone has: Sycamore Landing, the Blackstone River Watershed Council/Friends of the Blackstone property in Lincoln.

Arriving at the site early and a little sleepy, I donned my urban sombrero and picked out a life vest. President and founder of Friends of the Blackstone John Marsland helped me choose a kayak from the boathouse on the property.

Walking down a little path from the building, pushing our boats on dollies, we saw glimpses of the Blackstone peeking out from the trees. In this spot, the river doesn’t roar. It glides around a bend south toward Pawtucket and Central Falls.

It’s the perfect place to launch a boat from the riverbank easily and safely. The Friends of the Blackstone runs a paddling program for the public, and the access point on the property is a better place to get folks with differing mobilities in the water than other spots along the river. 

Heading south with the current, the group followed the bank and the Friends of the Blackstone property, where benches and large trees, including a towering sycamore, line the river.  

Marsland told me that before the property became a nature preserve, it was a junkyard.

“A 20-year project,” Marsland called it, describing the length of time it took to remove old piles of asphalt and trash. Then there was the invasive knotweed they had to battle over and over until they had beaten it down enough to plant pasture grass.

The stretch of the river after Sycamore Landing feels easy and peaceful. Going with the water’s flow, sometimes I pulled my paddles up and sat back to watch the sparrows flit between riverbanks or turtles bask in the fallen limbs that drape over the Blackstone’s edges.

The leaves turn autumn shades a little quicker near the water, so by our late September run last year, golden and reddish hues had started to appear in the foliage.

While we paddled, I caught up with Covino and Emily Vogler, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and creator of the Blackstone River Commons, a project to support river stewardship.

All was well and good until we hit the Albion Dam.

About 2 miles down the river from Sycamore Landing, you may not realize the hydropower structure is there until you start to hear it, or you are already going over the dam.

I heard the story of how Friends of the Blackstone restoration coordinator Keith Hainley accidentally made it over the dam in a canoe. He’d been cleaning up some trash on the river, and suddenly found himself listing over.

Hainley was fine, but Covino and Vogler warned me not to get too close.

We needed to get out of the water to continue our journey, and the access point by the dam and the Blackstone River Bikeway is more challenging than Sycamore Landing.

I scooched my kayak as close to the land as I could, wedging it in between some roots in the shallow water to try to moor my boat. I placed my paddle inside the boat — knowing I’d need both arms — before standing up slowly, finding my balance, and finally working up my courage to leap onto the steep bank that is more washed-out gully than path.

Once Covino and I were out, we helped each other haul the boats up to the parking lot of the bike path and into her truck.

Ironically, Covino said, “It’s easier to drive over [the Blackstone] than it is to sit by the water.”

About 20 minutes and a Dunkin’ Donuts stop later, we arrived at Elizabeth Webbing Mills Dam in Central Falls.

We started the process of lugging the boats and paddles back out of Covino’s truck bed and toward the water, and I felt nervous as I looked for where we could possibly enter the river.

Although I’d paddled the river before, I’d never been in Central Falls’ section.

Covino didn’t hesitate as she marched over to the water’s edge, where a sitting area with a bird feeder for the condo complex we had parked in met riprap and at least a 10-foot drop into the river.

When Covino had paddled the Blackstone two years before, she’d had to portage their boats around the dam and down the rocky edge.

Avoiding poison ivy as best she could, Covino showed me how she had lowered herself and her boat, rock by rock, to a place where she could finally start paddling.

Luckily for me, since I’m highly allergic to poison ivy, Covino didn’t expect me to follow her into the water; she only asked for a little help coming back up.

Back on dry land, I marveled at what she’d just done and the fact that it was the “best” option for getting into the area. Covino and I packed the canoes back in her truck, and as she closed the tailgate, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, “It’s not great, right?”

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about that paddle and how things could change for the better. 

So I called Covino and Vogler to ask them what they thought a more accessible Blackstone might look like.

With such varied access, Vogler and Covino said it makes a lot of sense that people don’t always take advantage of the river — it’s hard to know how to.

So Vogler created a map of 18 river access points. Most of the locations are improved access points, she said, and include both Sycamore Landing and the entrance to the river just before the Albion Dam.

The Elizabeth Webbing site, however, isn’t on the map. Even though Vogler and Covino have used it before, along with several other unofficial access points, that doesn’t mean they would recommend it.

“We wouldn’t list that as a like, ‘You should go to the back of this parking lot and put your boat in,’ or, ‘You should, you know, trek through this however-long, unmarked path of poison ivy and find your way down to a steep bank,’” Covino said. 

The listed access points are “more clear and permanent,” she added.

Vogler hopes people can use the map to help guide their own paddles or river visits. She said they’ll also create a StoryMap version that is more interactive, “because there’s only so much that you can include in a poster.”

Covino wants to enable users to report things, like where they found invasive water chestnuts on the river or unlisted access points.

Covino also said she would like to see better signage and improved accessibility at existing access points, as well as more signage and portages around dams.

The different parts of the river also offer different challenges. Rhode Island’s portion has more access points than Massachusetts has, Vogler said, but it also has more dams that force people out of the water.

The map will “demystify, hopefully, a little bit of those impediments that maybe are preventing people from feeling like they can access the river,” Vogler said.

“Once you wrap your head around it, it’s an amazing river to explore,” she added. “Next time we paddle, hopefully we’ll see others out there as well, exploring.”