Powerful waterfalls showcased at newest national park

Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park on the Passaic River in Paterson, New Jersey is America's newest national park. It features the second-most-powerful waterfall east of the Mississippi at the spot where Alexander Hamilton founded the country's first planned industrial city.

According to the U.S. Geological Society, "the potential power of the Great Falls of the Passaic River so inspired Alexander Hamilton that he organized the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. Pierre L'Enfant, the planner of Washington, D.C., designed a complex three-tired system that harnessed the falls and supplied water power to several mills. The city of Paterson became a thriving industrial center known for the manufacture of silk and locomotive parts. Today, the old industrial complete has been partially restored."

The creation of the new national park not only honors and preserves Paterson's past but should also brighten its future. One federal agency has ranked Paterson as the most economically distressed city in the United States.

The park covers 35 acres, 15 miles west of New York City. The adjacent area is home to the largest and best example of early manufacturing mills in the United States with 18th, 19th, and 20th-century waterpower remnants. The 77-foot-tall falls engineered raceways and mills to form a complex that is unique in the United States.

Cool, clear, fresh, and FREE water

Pity the poor city dweller: Getting a decent drink of good tasting water usually boils down to buying bottled water, or maybe chucking a quarter in a vending machine for a gallon of "purified" tap water. If you're in Western Washington, the story can be different. Remember the old "Olympia Beer" commercials of yesterday, featuring the always invisible, but certainly mischievous "artesians"?

Olympia Beer was brewed in Tumwater, Washington, and claimed its fame in its company slogan, found on every bottle and can of the golden liquid, "It's the Water." And indeed it was, as Olympia Beer and all other brews produced in the Tumwater facility were based on water drawn from artesian wells. Well, drawn may be a misleading word, because artesian wells are those in which the water freely flows upward from the ground, not requiring pumping due to the dynamics of the geology surrounding an artesian aquifer.

At any rate, at one time a visit to the Olympia Brewery would provide you a good hour's worth of interesting history and viewing, and in the end, a visit to the tap room where you could sample the various brews from the plant. But several years ago the plant shut its doors and the buildings stand empty. The beer may have stopped flowing from Tumwater, but the artesian water still gushes. In downtown Olympia, a freely flowing artesian well gushes forth crystal clear, cold, fresh and tasty water for all who'd come by and fill their jugs.

If you're in the area and in need of good water, you'll find the well in a parking lot bordering the south side of 4th Avenue, between Adams and Jefferson streets, just east of Olympic Outfitters.