Lowell is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell is known as the birthplace of the industrial revolution in the United States. Founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles, Lowell is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 30 miles northwest of Boston in what was once the farming community. The so-called Boston Associates, including Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson of the Boston Manufacturing Company, named the new mill town after their visionary leader, Francis Cabot Lowell, who had died five years before its 1823 incorporation.

Throughout that early time period of the City, immigrants came from various European countries and French-speaking Canada to work in Lowell and settled in ethnic neighborhoods. The city's population reaching almost 50% foreign-born by 1900. By the time World War I broke out in Europe, the city had reached its economic and population peak of over 110,000 people.

After decades of economic decline, Lowell started to revive with employment opportunities in new technology. At the same time, Lowell became home to thousands of new immigrants, many from Cambodia following the genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The city continues to rebound. Lending their rich culture to the fabric of Lowell, Africans from countries throughout Africa, are some of the city's most recent immigrants. And they bring to the Region the African Festival Lowell!