Fall River

Fall River, a busy manufacturing city and port of entry of Bristol county, Massachusetts, at the mouth of the Taunton River, 49 miles S. of Boston by rail. The town is well built, the handsome city hall and many other buildings being constructed of a fine granite quarried in the vicinity. It has a capacious and deep harbour, and is connected with New York daily by a line of large steam-packets. Fall River is noted for its cotton-mills, of which it contains nearly fifty, with about 1,500,000 spindles. Other manufactures are nails and machinery, abundant water-power being supplied by a tributary of the Taunton, which falls 130 feet in its last half-mile. Pop. (1870) 26,766; (1880) 49,006; (1890) 74,398.