Low-Voltage Lighting Saxonville, Middlesex County, MA

Native Americans lived and fished in the area of the Sudbury falls for centuries up through the 18th century.

The first industry in Framingham was a grist mill that John Stone erected at the falls on the river, granted by Act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts. In May 1656, Edmund Rice and Peter Noyes surveyed 11 acres (45,000 m²) of land purchased by John Stone of Sudbury from the Indians that was supplemented by a grant of the General Court to Stone of an additional 50 acres (200,000 m²) at the Sudbury River falls. The mill rights were held by the Stone family for nearly two centuries when it became Saxonville Mills.

Around 1865, a dam was built across the river to control and exploit for power. The remnants of the dam’s power control gates and gears can still be seen near the falls at Central Street, near the intersection of Central and Water Streets. An underground channel supplied water from above the falls to the manufacturing plant where it was used to drive water wheels or turbines to provide mechanical manufacturing power at the mill. The lower portion of the 1858 section of the mill where waste water exited the turbines and poured into the lower portion of the river is now behind flood control walls.