Blackstone River Bikeway ride a wish come true for Millville icon, 93

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Blackstone River Bikeway ride a wish come true for Millville icon, 93 Worcester Telegram

Blackstone, MA - That's another item checked off 93-year-old Margaret Carroll's bucket list.

Last month, at the ribbon-cutting for a 3.7-mile segment of the Blackstone River Bikeway Ms. Carroll, the Blackstone Heritage Corridor’s longest-serving volunteer, remarked that she’d love to travel the length of the trail.

At her age, she didn’t expect to get the opportunity.

But on Thursday, thanks to her friends and a special recumbent bicycle built for two, Ms. Carroll’s wish became a reality.

Blackstone Heritage Corridor Inc. and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation arranged for Ms. Carroll to ride from Blackstone to Millville to Uxbridge and back on a recumbent tandem Tricycle captained by a rider from All Out Adventures.

It was a way of saying thank you to Ms. Carroll, whose services as historian and civic volunteer well into her 10th decade have made her a Blackstone Valley institution.

Ms. Carroll, a lifelong resident of Millville and the town’s historian, served as grand marshal for the town’s centennial celebration in 2016.

A volunteer since 1990 for Blackstone Heritage Corridor Inc., the nonprofit that manages the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Ms. Carroll was instrumental in the planning and development of the Blackstone River Bikeway.

So it was all aboard for a ride along the bike path on Thursday, with Ms. Carroll in the back seat of a three-wheeled cycle piloted by All Out Adventures program leader Patti Dougherty of Easthampton.

The caravan that accompanied the cyclist of honor included a recumbent bicycle, bicycles towing children in trailers, and an 1890s-style high-wheeler.

Before setting out from Blackstone, proclamations were read from the town of Millville and from the directors of Blackstone Heritage Corridor Inc. declaring Thursday “Margaret Carroll Day on the Blackstone River Greenway.”

Blackstone Heritage Corridor Inc. coordinates cultural, historical and environmental activities for a national park spanning two dozen mill towns in what has been called the “Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution” in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Along the route, Ms. Carroll disembarked at Millville Lock to give an impromptu talk on Millville history, about the old Grand Trunk Railroad once situated there, and St. John’s Episcopal Church with its double bell tower, standing since 1850 along what is now the bikeway route.

And she spoke about what the bikeway and the day’s honor meant to her.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful day for someone who’s spent her whole life in this town,” Ms. Carroll said.

“It’s a day I’d like to share with everybody - those who came before me, those with me now, and those who will come after me.

“It’s just incredible that we have this remarkable highway into nature. We’re surrounded by such beauty. So few people are aware of it. I saw things along that trail that I had never seen before.”

She recalled attending her first meeting on the bikeway in 1990. Then it was “a dream, just a map,” she said. “It grew and grew ... Now it’s done. It has to be used. It must be used.”

The bikeway opens up the resources - natural, historic, cultural and...

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