Lowell, Massachusetts: The Mill City That Won't Stop Telling You About the Mills

Welcome to Lowell, the city that kicked off America's Industrial Revolution and has been coasting on that achievement ever since, like a guy who won the homecoming game in 1987 and still wears the jacket. But the roasters at RoastMyTown.com missed one thing: Lowell is actually a great place to visit. We'll still make fun of it.

Cradle of the Industrial Revolution (Now With Lofts)

Lowell was founded in 1822 as a textile hub and incorporated as a town in 1826. Today it's the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts, with 115,554 residents as of the 2020 census. The Merrimack River powered the whole operation, and for a while Lowell was the future.

Then the textile business moved south, then overseas, and Lowell was left with enormous brick buildings and a lot of free time. The National Park Service turned the mills into museums, and developers turned the rest into loft apartments. It's now the only place in America where you can learn about 19th-century labor conditions and then pay $2,400 a month to live in a converted version of them.

You can walk the canals, tour the Boott Cotton Mills, and hear the sound of a working weave room. It's loud enough that you'll feel sympathy for every mill girl who ever lived, and then fall in love with the city anyway.

Jack Kerouac Left, and Lowell Built Him a Shrine

Jack Kerouac was born here, wrote a career's worth of books about leaving, and left. Lowell's response was to build Kerouac Park, with his words carved into granite pillars. It's the civic equivalent of throwing a parade for your ex.

But Lowell is persistent. The town that Kerouac fled keeps finding new ways to keep him around. On the Road may be about leaving, but Lowell apparently never got the memo.

The Best Restaurants Were Built by Refugees (Give Them the Credit)

Here we have to be serious for a moment, because this is where Lowell actually shines. In the early 1980s, thousands of refugees from Cambodia settled in Lowell after escaping war and genocide. The community grew fast, partly because of a job market: Wang Laboratories, headquartered in Lowell, was a major employer in the area.

Today Lowell has one of the largest populations of Cambodian Americans in the U.S., and roughly 13% of the city is Cambodian by recent ACS estimates. Other sources put the community at a larger share at its peak. It also produced history: Sokhary Chau became the first Cambodian American mayor of a major U.S. city, serving from 2022 to 2024.

The result is Cambodia Town, concentrated on Branch, Middlesex, and Westford streets, where you can get amok, kuy teav, and num banh chok that will make you feel bad about every Dunkin' run you've ever made. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still ordering the safe thing at Cobblestones and calling it nightlife.

Baseball, Gators, and the Minor Leagues of the Minor Leagues

Lowell's baseball team, the Spinners, spent 25 years (1996 to 2020) as a Red Sox farm team, and their mascot is Canaligator, a gator in a city with no gators. The pro affiliation ended in 2020, but baseball refused to die. The Spinners are now an amateur team in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, playing at LeLacheur Park.

If you prefer your sports with more ice, UMass Lowell's River Hawks are the main attraction. Connor Hellebuyck, a former River Hawk, has starred in goal for the U.S. men's hockey team, which is more than any shopping cart in the canal can say. The town clearly does have something to brag about.

Lowell Right Now: Spaghetti Factories and Data Centers

Lowell is still reinventing itself. The old Prince Spaghetti factory is now a data center, run by the Markley Group, and neighbors are fighting its expansion. Somewhere, a mill girl is nodding: a factory was repurposed into something nobody asked for, and the neighbors are annoyed. Lowell is nothing if not consistent.

There's lighter news too. InsideLowell reports that Lowell's first-ever drone show is coming to MonsterBash & Fall Fest, and Open Streets Lowell returns on October 3.

The Verdict

Lowell is a city with a big past, a bigger food scene, and a mascot with no business existing. It's close enough to Boston to visit on a day trip (the commuter rail's Lowell Line runs from North Station), and it's different enough to feel like its own thing. Come for the mills, stay for the Cambodian food, and leave with a Kerouac paperback you'll never finish.

Think we were too nice? See the full roast on RoastMyTown.com.