Kelli McGuire, (Letter to the Editor, May 13) I couldn’t agree more! I grew up and have lived most of my life right here in Camden, fully connected to the building with the river running under it. My grandmother was the founder of The Smiling Cow and I have run it for the past 45 years. As Ms. McGuire so eloquently wrote in her letter, “Why on earth would we remove one of the most distinctive — not to mention most-charming — features of our beautiful little village?”

During my decades owning The Smiling Cow, I have talked to tens of thousands of visitors who are at first curious and then utterly charmed by the story of the river flowing under Main Street, beneath our building, out over the falls, and into Camden harbor. Families and traveling groups of friends take pictures year after year in the same spot on our back porch with the spectacular view as their backdrop. From our back deck we can look next door to see people at the Camden Deli marveling at the view, or look down to see people looking up at the falls from the park as they make their way along the lower path. 

The falls are a magical place where people can pause and reflect and marvel at the sound and the tumult of the river water plunging over the dam. Of course, there are many practical, financial and logistical reasons for leaving the dam as it is, reasons that I and many others believe greatly benefit the town, but we should not discount the beauty and tradition of the falls.

The generations of people who know Camden by the falls and the joy it brings to those who live here and pass by it every day. Those of us who spend our working days above the river overlooking the falls respect and love both the nod to our industrial past  (history) that this structure reminds us of and the way the dam is integrated so beautifully into the landscape. The Montgomery Dam is part of what makes Camden... Camden!

Meg Quijano lives in Camden