Turning Away and Coming Back: Mill Towns, Legacy Dams, and the Rivers We Forgot
Thu, Mar 19
|Portland Public Library
The impact of legacy dams in the built environment
Time & Location
Mar 19, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Portland Public Library, 20 Freestone Ave, Portland, CT 06480, USA
About the event
New England’s rivers built the mill towns—-or did the towns build the rivers? This lecture traces how 14,000 dams have shaped the ecology and our
experience of the region’s waterways and asks how design might help communities find their way back to the water. The presentation will focus on the regional research the Garden Club of America helped make possible, with a preview of the design work it has inspired.
About the presenter: Travis Kelley is a landscape designer, botanical artist, and storyteller. His design sensibility is rooted in the belief that landscapes are repositories of cultural memory, shaped by people, economies, and ecologies over time. His current research investigates the legacy of New England’s mill dams, exploring how post-dam landscapes might rebuild human-river relationships through embodied, place-based intervention.
Travis holds a BA in Writing for Film and Television from Emerson College and is completing his Master of Landscape Architecture…
Tickets
General Admission
No ticket necessary.
$0.00
Total
$0.00