The Mohicans called it Nachawinasick and the early Dutch residents called it Turkeyan. The nearby falls was called cahoos, in the native tongue of the Mohawk for "falling or overturned canoe." No matter what you call it, today's Cohoes is a historic city waiting to be reborn and rediscovered.

I spent some time there recently taking pictures of the unfortunate razing of the Victor Carrybag mill. Unfortunately, Cohoes, like most northeastern cities, has had its share of losing much of its historic infrastructure from fire, neglect, and downright stupidity (can you say Silliman Memorial Church). The latest mill razing was just one more reminder. However, after spending a few hours driving around, I was convinced this city has heritage destination written all over it.

While founded as a farming community, it became famous as a textile city during the 19th century. Cohoes lies at the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers and is the historic gateway to both valleys. Historians would agree that if the mighty Cohoes Falls were not present, it might have been here that the earliest Dutch settlements and businesses that characterized the founding of Albany would have started.

In fact, the Cohoes Falls was considered one of North America's wonders of the world to early visitors. Dankers and Sluyter, two Dutch missionaries who visited in 1679 wrote "Those falls are a great and wonderful work of God; but, although they have so much water that the wind caused the spray and moisture to rise continually in the air, so that spectators, who stand two hundred feet or so, higher, are made wet, especially when there are any gusts of wind driving from one side, as happened to us..." I also was the recipient of that spray as I stood on the ledge close to a row of 19th century mill houses last week.

With the creation of the Erie and Champlain Canals, an influx of immigrants, especially French, by the 1870s, and several of the world's largest cotton mills running 203,000 spindles, along with 2 knitting mills, 2 iron foundries, and 3 machine shops, Cohoes was destined for greatness. There were (and survive) hundreds of workers housing dotted around the city, not far from the mill sites. Imagine a city with packet boats coming through the city on canals, and thousands of immigrants working to the hum of those spindles and looms, driven by waterpower diverted from the great falls.

When I was a kid, I remember Remsen Street as a bustling downtown street with many businesses with cast iron storefronts. The buildings and storefronts are still there, though devoid of much hustle and bustle.

There also was an event in Cohoes in the 1970s that stopped me from quitting college. I took a summer job working at Star Textile near the bridge to Waterford. As I walked into work the first morning, my eyes began burning; they felt like they were on fire. I was told not to rub them since, "it will make it worse," the foreman nonchalantly told me (formaldehyde spray to keep fiber particles down!). I also noticed that many of the workers were missing fingers. After a day of watching a loom sweeping back and forth for 8 hours, and almost falling in from becoming hypnotized, I decided college wasn't that tough!

While the industries have left, many of the buildings remain, some renovated and reused like the Ogden Mills (housing). Others like the Harmony Mills are begging for renovation. Most of the workers housing is still being used.

The Cohoes Music Hall, while not having the acoustics of the Troy Savings Bank music hall, is nevertheless a great performing arts location that was very popular a few years back when the 8th Step Coffee House was operating it for musical performances (and evicted under rather strange circumstances). A new non-profit organization has ended a year of more traditional plays.

Cohoes is the site where the famous Mastodon was uncovered in 1866 while constructing Harmony Mill #3. This prehistoric elephant like creature lived here some 11,070 years ago according to radiocarbon dating. It was displayed at the mills, then Harmony Hall in Troy, before it ended up getting reconstructed and now welcomes you at the entrance of the New York State Museum in Albany.

I can see a restored Cohoes promoting its yellow brick streets, cast iron storefronts, exposed power canals and locks, historic sites such as the Anthony Van Schaick Mansion, built in 1755 (and visited by George Washington) and restored mills, all becoming a heritage tourism destination site, especially by French Canadians from the north.

There are two organizations, the Spindle City Historical Historic Society and Cohoes Caretakers trying to protect Cohoes' history, tradition and buildings. I wish them success.