The Jones Falls have, since Baltimore's earliest days, been at the very heart of the city—both geographically and metaphorically.¹ A Quaker named David Jones was the first resident on the north side of what was then known as Cole’s Harbor (known today as the Inner Harbor) in the 1660s, joining only a handful of other settlers in this part of Baltimore County, which had been established in 1659.²  He gave his name to the “pacific brook” upon which he built his house as well as the settlement that sprang up around it, Jones Town.³  The junction of the Jones Falls and an old Susquehannock Indian trail that connected to Philadelphia attracted many to the area. Industrious residents soon discovered that the power of the Jones Falls could be harnessed to operate mills in and around the city, as Jonathan Hanson had when he built his stone mill at the corner of Holliday and Bath Streets in 1711.⁴   By 1726, the banks of the Jones Falls were home to a gristmill, tobacco houses, a store, and several homes.⁵  The falls also supplied residents with fresh drinking water.  In addition to its practical purposes, inhabitants appreciated the social and aesthetic value of the Jones Falls. “For many decades it was the pride of Baltimore city and the envy of other cities. It was famous then as a fragrant and beautiful stream. [...] At one time the stream was pure and undefiled and was the scene of many baptisms.”⁶  Baltimore novelist and Whig politician John Pendleton Kennedy recalled the Jones Falls as “a pretty rural stream that meandered through meadows garnished with shrubbery and filled with browsing cattle, making a pleasant landscape.”⁷

Throughout the early part of the 18th century, residents of Jones Town lived and worked separately from the communities of Fell’s Point and Baltimore Town.⁸ A series of expansions took place from 1745 to 1773, eventually merging the three villages under the name Baltimore Town.  As Baltimore transformed from a sleepy town to a thriving industrial city, the area around Jones Falls became more densely populated and heavily used. The city experienced unprecedented commercial expansion in the late 18th and early 19th century due to three factors: the falls, the harbor, and the roads. As local farmers began to transition their land from tobacco to grains—and the demand for bread and flour exploded in Europe and the West Indies—Baltimore became a natural hub for trade. Wheat and other grains thrived in the fertile soil of the Patapsco region, and farmers could transport their crops to Baltimore’s mills using turnpike roads from York, Reisterstown, and Frederick. Of the 50 mills that had been built within 18 miles of the city by the early 19th century, twelve were along the Jones Falls.⁹  The proximity of the falls to the harbor meant that the milled flour could then easily be loaded onto ships and exported abroad. With this flurry of activity, Baltimore soon eclipsed Boston and Charleston to become the third largest commercial port in the United States, following New York and Philadelphia.¹⁰  The character of Jones Town had changed substantially during this period, and those who lived by the falls in the mid-19th century could barely imagine it as a quaint pastoral stream. Before his death in 1870, John P. Kennedy explained, “People wonder to hear that the Jones’ Falls ever rippled over the bed now laden with rows of comfortable dwellings and that cows once browsed upon a meadow that now produces steam engines, soap and candles and lager beer.”¹¹

1. While the stream was spelled “Jones’s” in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, by the 19^th century the stream was usually known as“Jones’ falls.” By the 20^th century, it was spelled “Jones Falls.” I will use the contemporary spelling throughout this paper.
2. H.E. Shepherd, ed., History of Baltimore, Maryland, From its Founding as a Town to the Current Year, 1729-1898 (Uniontown, PA: S.B. Nelson, 1898), 10.
3. J.  Thomas Scharf, History of Maryland from the Earliest Period to Modern Day, Volume II (Baltimore: John D. Piet, 1879), 419.
4. Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Baltimore: Its History and Its People, Volume I (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1912), 63.
5. Maryland Writers’ Project, Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State (New York: Oxford Publishing Company, 1940), 199.
6. Wilbur Street, The history and development of Jones’ Falls in Baltimore (Publisher unlisted: 1926), 2.
7. Quoted in Henry Theodore Tuckerman, The Life of John Pendleton Kennedy (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1871), 92.
8. Shepherd, History of Baltimore, 13.
9. Clayton Colman Hall, Baltimore: Its History and Its People, 82.
10. Hall, Baltimore: Its History and Its People, 63.
11. Tuckerman, The Life of John Pendleton Kennedy, 92.

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