The initiative for the canal came from Providence, where a merchant community wished to profit from trade with the farming country of the Blackstone Valley and Worcester County.

[2] The people of Worcester and the Blackstone Valley, eager for transport that would enable them to get better prices for their produce, welcomed the plan.

[3] The canal's construction may have been motivated by competition among rival industrialists to curtail "water rights".

The canal opened on October 7, 1828, when the packet boat Lady Carrington arrived in Worcester, the first vessel to make the trip.

The canal used "slack-water" to bypass narrow valley areas and intersected the Blackstone River 16 times over its 45-mile course.

The canal followed the course of Mill Creek from the center of Worcester, MA to the southern part of that community.

Since the canal's closure, parts of its watercourse were filled and other segments are now heavily overgrown with brush and trees.

The Blackstone Canal is historically significant as a transportation network arising from a canal-building frenzy of the early 19th-century.

The canal played a key role in stimulating the industry between Providence and Worcester and the towns and villages along the Moshassuck and Blackstone Rivers.

Though its useful service life was just twenty years long, the canal and the parks incorporating the canal are "visible and tangible parts of the city's and the state's history of growth, planning, commercial ambition and prosperity".