Can you name this waterfall and the bridge that’s framing it?
The lovely, 40-foot waterfall cascading behind this stone bridge is named for a murderer. In the late 18th century, its namesake was one of the region’s earliest settlers, a lumberman who built a mill on a stream that, today, is also named for him (draining a pond that, likewise, bears his name). In 1789, he got into fisticuffs with his neighbors — a newspaper reported he’d been drinking “very freely” — and fatally smashed one of their skulls with a club. The lumberman escaped jail after his arrest and was on the lam for two months before being reapprehended and eventually hanged at what’s now the town of Dresden.
His immediate descendants seem to have been a better lot. They moved to a nearby island and became pillars of the community and a prominent seafaring family.
The bridge in front of the falls was built some 135 years after the lumberman’s execution, financed by a wealthy fellow whose family also lends its name to a few sites nearby (and elsewhere). Plenty of admirers lay eyes on the falls these days, a natural highlight in an area beloved for its landscapes but not known for waterfalls. Autumn is arguably the best time to see it — in the summer, traffic in the surrounding area can be murder.
Submit your answer here.
We’ll feature our favorite letter in an upcoming issue — and send the winner a Down East wall calendar.
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