Does this location look familiar to you? Imagine taller trees, cars instead of a trolley, more construction equipment, and, just beyond the left edge of the photograph, the Old Stone Church. This postcard, created likely in the late 1910s following completion of the Wachusett Reservoir, looks north to the Rt. 140 causeway across the reservoir.…

 West Boylston was a mill town in the 19th century. Several mills lined the Quinapoxet River: Cowee’s Mill, Clarendon Mills, and Rice’s Mill, to name a few. The mills, of course, no longer stand, and their foundations rest at the bottom of the Wachusett Reservoir. Below are photographs of some mill workers. Both photographs depict…

Below are some of West Boylston’s old mills. The first picture depicts Cowee’s Mill perched on a small dam waterfall. The large, white building dotted with windows (featured in the second and third photos, both times on the right) is Rice’s Mill. The final mill in these photographs, not shown clearly, is Eli Holbrook’s mill…