Windham and Willimantic is the story of a town built on waterpower and imagination. While rivers provided power for local industries, imagination made the town a national innovator in typography, papermaking, and textile manufacturing. This is where the first papermaking machinery in the country was made. This is the home of the American Thread Company, which grew from one of the first successful makers of cotton thread into an enterprise occupying one million square feet of factory space spread over forty acres. Windham and Willimantic, however, is not all about work. In this volume learn how an eighteenth-century embarrassment became a symbol of civic pride; meet two movie stars who dropped in when their airliner made an emergency landing at the local airport; and join Willimantic's Fourth of July Boom Box Parade, where everyone is a participant.