Industrial Remains: Community Narratives of Mashapaug Pond in Providence, Rhode Island

Abstract

Working at the intersection of environmental history and oral history, this chapter argues that oral history interviews are vital to understanding Rhode Island’s Mashapaug Pond, a small body of water in a densely populated city, and other sites contaminated by toxic waste. Recent revelations about environmental pollution from local industrial production have changed people’s relationship with the pond. Although once disregarded, their recollections about industrial dumping and questionable environmental conditions from the 1950s to present are now commonly shared, providing a history of pollution and leading residents to question the ways they thought they knew the pond. Interviews suggest that many residents remain deeply connected to Mashapaug, demonstrating the resilience of place attachment and the ways that memories of the past can shape people’s imagination of a place’s future.