Retracing Jack Kerouac

The Merrimack River, as seen from the downtown side of Lowell and Bridge Street. It did capture Kerouac’s imagination (as it did with Henry David Thoreau before, who wrote his short story ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in 1949) throughout his life and especially as a kid. But it was also responsible for the destruction of Kerouac’s father’s Leo print shop during a flood in 1936.