The museum exhibits representations from Paterson's early industrial past and serves as a community center promoting the fine arts. A number of mills have been artfully restored, including one of the former Rogers Locomotive mills, which is now the Paterson Museum. Many great people, organizations and governmental agencies have worked over the years to enhance the historic district and protect it from neglect, demolition and incompatible development. A national competition will be held for the park’s new design, focusing on ecological aesthetics of the Great Falls, the city's Native American heritage and industrial history. Campbell, came to the Great Falls and officially announced the designation of the Great Falls historic district as one of three new state parks! 'Today is an important day in which we celebrate not only God's natural beauty, but the people of Paterson, the ones who worked in these mills and who walked these streets,' McGreevey said. McGreevey, along with DEP Commissioner Bradley M. The entire NJ Congressional Delegation sent the Secretary a very strong letter of appeal in behalf of a positive determination. In 2001, a bill in Congress authorized the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating the historic district as a unit of the National Park System. This led to the designation of this district as a national historic landmark by President Gerald Ford in 1976. The historic district has been listed as a National Historic Place since 1970 when the late Mary Ellen Kramer led efforts to block a riverside highway that would have cut through the mill district near the falls.

This was truly an important emergence of America's industrial prosperity and the labor rights movement. This great industrial center attracted skilled artisans from all over Europe and the tremendous economic activity that arose here triggered the 'Silk Strike' of 1913, when the skilled workers demanded an eight-hour day. Paterson became the world's center for the production of cotton, silk and locomotives.

The waterpower system fostered many technological advances in industry, such as the first cotton duck cloth for sails, the first continuous sheet paper, the first revolver by Samuel Colt, and the first practical submarine by John Holland. Paterson achieved prominence in the national economy undreamed of by its founder. The City of Paterson, along with other manufacturing centers across New England, eventually created great wealth from the combination of waterpower, machines, labor, and capital. The planned industrialization of this historic place is the realization of the Hamiltonian vision of an industrialized America. With this enterprise, along with the law, finance and incentives he put in place as the nation's first Secretary of the Treasurer, Hamilton forged the basis of American capitalism. Hamilton envisioned an industrialized America and the creation of this raceway system was his ambitious example of how corporations could be organized to develop manufacturing on a large scale. It was the boldest private enterprise ever conceived in the early days of the United States. They hired Pierre Charles L'Enfant to design the largest, most significant power system at that time, one that diverted water from the Passaic River above the falls to mills along its route. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton and a group of investors created the S.U.M., the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, to harness the tremendous power of the Passaic Great Falls. It has been described as America's very first systematic attempt to develop extensive waterpower for manufacturing purposes. The 77-foot tall falls, engineered raceways and mills form a complex that is unique and irreplaceable to our nation. At the district's core is the natural landmark Great Falls, the second largest waterfall by volume east of the Mississippi.

It contains 18th, 19th, and 20th-century waterpower remnants, including a three-tiered water raceway system. Located just 12 miles west of New York City, it is home to the largest and best example of early manufacturing mills in the United States. National Historic Landmark district is a 118-acre industrial historic site located in Paterson, New Jersey.

Area around the Paterson Great Falls is designated to be a National Park! The ATP Site, Paterson, New Jersey at low water, 1903.

Paterson waterfall hours