The falls on the Cocheco River sit at the heart of downtown Dover, visible from the bridges that cross the river near the mill district. They are not dramatic by the standards of New England's bigger waterfalls, but they don't need to be — their significance is economic rather than scenic. This is where the water drops enough to be harnessed, and you can stand on the bridge and look downstream at the brick mills built to capture that energy and understand in a direct, physical way why the city exists where it does.
The view is best from the Main Street Bridge and the pedestrian crossings nearby. Early mornings and after rain, when the water is high, the falls have genuine force. The combination of falling water, brick mill walls, and the downtown skyline just beyond makes for one of the more coherent industrial landscape views in New Hampshire — the kind of scene that reads as picturesque now but was once simply the noise and power source at the center of working-class city life.