The Cocheco Mills complex lines the eastern bank of the Cocheco River just south of the falls, a series of long brick buildings with the characteristic proportions of 19th-century industrial New England: regular rows of windows, thick walls, structures built to last because the machines inside were too valuable to risk. The mills operated continuously from the early 1800s through much of the 20th century, and the physical fabric of the complex reflects that long run — you can trace expansions and modifications across the facades if you look carefully.
Today the buildings house apartments and offices, a reuse pattern common across former mill towns in the region but executed here with the original structures largely intact. The exterior is the real draw: you can walk along the riverbank and take in the scale of what was built here, and understand in a concrete way why Dover grew where it did and how it grew so fast. The falls that powered the mills are visible from the nearby bridges, and the relationship between falling water, turning machinery, and woven cloth becomes suddenly legible.