The site of Valley Falls Heritage Park was once occupied by a textile manufacturing complex shown in a 1915 drawing, with nearly all of its buildings visible except the earliest structures built by the Harris family circa 1813–1820. Crawford Allen enlarged the complex in the 1830s, and the Chace family built nearly all remaining structures circa 1840–1900, including the stone dam. Sayles Finishing Plant later added new buildings in the 20th century and in the 1920s leased parts of the plant to several textile manufacturers, but competition from the American South and overseas drove New England’s textile industry into sharp decline. As tenants disappeared and income fell while Cumberland taxes remained due, Sayles Finishing Plants demolished the mill in 1934 to reduce taxes by about $600 a year. On April 5, 1934, E.J. McCall was hired to tear down the plant roofs by June 15, the start of Cumberland’s fiscal year, and by September he had leveled all the walls, leaving fragments that remain today. After intake gates west of the dam were sealed and debris was pushed into some races, floods in 1936 and 1938 forced the company to cut a trench across the site in 1939 and replace the gates in 1940. The demolished grounds soon returned to trees and brush, and by 1991 dense vegetation covered parts of the ruins until selective clearing revealed the surviving raceways, canals, walls, and other historic features now visible in the park.