Discover the new nature and educational park at the original site of America's first Water Experimental Station! In 1887, the Massachusetts Board of Health founded the Lawrence Experimental Station with the mission of treating waste-water and degraded surface water in the Commonwealth. The oldest such facility in the USA, Lawrence's station was the first to filter water as a preventative measure against rampant typhoid fever epidemics. The original site was at the far east end of Island Street, at the Spicket River flume that enters the Merrimack River, which is now a park, established in 2015. When the station first opened, it was under the direction of Hiram Francis Mills, Father of American Sanitary engineering, and his team of MIT graduates along with W.T. Sedgwick, T. Smith, E.H. Swallow-Richards, W. Nichols and T. Down. The new nature and education site is located at the spill-waters of the mile long North Canal, and the Spicket River flume and Merrimack River.