The River and the Rail: The Industrial Evolution of the Port of New Bedford

The photos in this essay document the commercial evolution of New Bedford, Massachusetts, harbor from the 1840s to the 1960s. Railroad infrastructure construction in the 1840s connected the seaport to the hinterland enabling the rapid growth of industrial manufacturing in the second half of the nineteenth century. Coal fueled this growth, coming primarily by sea carried by large schooners and barges. The large textile mills and other factories making glassware, drill bits, machinery, and cordage required large amounts of fuel and the ability to transport goods to market. By the 1880s, manufacturing came to replace the city's primary traditional industry of commercial whaling and the waterfront evolved with a number of coal pockets, extensions of the railroad, cotton storage warehouses, and improved wharves, slips, and piers. Factories and coal pockets located above the New Bedford Fairhaven Bridge necessitated the dredging of the harbor channel and improvements in the bridge for access upstream. By the 1920s and 1930s, commercial fishing began to increase, gradually replacing the declining textile manufacturing industry, and once again the harbor shifted its function to serve the growing fishing fleet.