Providence sugar works is located on the Providence Road about half-way between the village of Les Coteaux and the capitol town of Scarborough. From Scarborough, follow Providence Road up from town. Pay attention, and make sure you stay on Providence Road, its pretty tricky. If you haven't made a wrong turn, you'll eventually start going down hill and will soon see the Providence River on your immediate right. Pay even more attention here because the road will narrow to one lane around a sharp left hand bend (honk), and continue downhill. Look for the abandoned shack and the small road. They're on your right. Park here. If you cross a bridge, you went too far.
When you get out of the car, you won't see much. Walk straight towards the river (it's less than 100 feet away) between the shack and the small road. There should be a visible path. Watch your step, the bamboo leaves you're walking on can be slippery. When you get into the river bed, stop, face upstream, and look up. This is what you'll see.
This aqueduct, about 70 feet high and 90 feet across, is the tallest and longest on the island. It was used to carry water from a dam that's about a mile upstream from where you're standing, to a water wheel that was housed in the wheel pit to the right of the aqueduct. Water was the preferred source of power for Tobago planters in the eighteenth century because it was predictable. Water was stored behind a dam, and released when there was cane to be crushed. The other primary power source was the wind. Less predicable than water, it was often the only power source available to planters without a good sized stream on their property. Predicable power was an important concern of Tobago planters because once the sugar cane was cut, the more time that elapsed prior to crushing it to extract the juice the more it dried out. As juice is the raw material from which sugar is made, the more juice there was in the cut cane, the more sugar could be produced.
See the 3 foot high hole in the wall underneath aqueduct at about the level of the stream? That's where the water that drove the wheel exited the wheel pit. Go on in (don't mind the bats). The space you're standing in, I'd guess its about 30-35 feet long, is just about the size of the water wheel that drove the mill at this factory.
Go back out and walk back up the path towards the road. If you notice the dam just downstream from the aqueduct, don't worry too much about it. It likely impounded water for the rum making process, the second of the three principal manufactures of a sugar factory. As you go up the path, you'll see a building on your left. That is the mill house, where the crushing mill sat. It will also provide you with another view of the wheel pit if you go inside. There's also a "copper" in there. These large, cast iron pots are what the cane juice was boiled in to make sugar. It originally sat in the factory, which is to the right as you walk up the path. As this factory is in pretty poor shape, we'll skip it, and visit a better one later.
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