I’d appreciate that - I’m having a hard time picturing this creek memorial.
My first reaction is, “This is my damned property, and I’ll do as I damned well please with it,” (I’m very territorial), but I get that you don’t want to come rampaging in and upset the locals.
Hey, from everything I’ve heard about Maine, you’ll always be outsiders anyway, so do what you want! 
Maybe this storm will take care of the dilemma.
Do they build wicker men? :eek:
The bees, the bees!
That’s it! Remove it during or shortly after Frankenstorm.
If the woman and her granddaughter were drowned while trying to navigate the road, any idea why the memorial was placed that far away from the road, and on private property to boot?
I’d approach the family, explain to them that while it is your property, you do want to honor their feelings, and then propose something like what Szlater suggested and see how they react. If the family’s OK with it, then nobody else should have a beef. And when you’re new in a small town, you really don’t want to piss off the community right off.
Oh, and even if they’re OK with it, don’t take down the existing memorial until the new one’s in place.
Maybe where you live. Around my neck of the woods, the damned things seem to stay forever. There are a few on regular bike routes of mine that have been there for at least a decade.
Burn it. That’ll really show the town folk you mean business.
I’m in ME too… gimme the nod and I’ll come burn it down some night. Blame it on the KKK if you’d like.
https://picasaweb.google.com/m/viewer?fgl=true&pli=1#album/109667390045908457426/5803682038803875121
Sorry for the delay, I’m doing this from my iPhone and am still learning how to use the thing.
Some corrections: the cross is actually 6’ tall, and is sort of in the creek, but you can still get to it. The creek is flooded right now due to a beaver problem which we are addressing. there is also a concrete bench out there, which I hadn’t noticed before since I had not waded out there.
I’m liking the “oops, storm damage” idea. 
The distance pics are taken from the road.
Do you even know if the family still lives in the area? It doesn’t sound like anyone is maintaining it.
If they are in the area and you tear it down and try to make it look like an accident / storm damage / stranger vandalism, they might just try to erect something bigger, fuglier, and more permanent.
Your link takes me to a bunch of pictures, none of which look anything like what you’re describing.
I have no idea how it works in Maine, but in my state, even though you might own all of the land around the creek, you don’t own any of the water and you can’t build on or control much of anything on the bank, either. That only applies to “navigable streams,” but the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) defines that as any mudhole that can float a canoe at least one day a year.
So the monument might have been erected in violation of the law, and/or your removal of it might also be in violation. I wouldn’t count on one cancelling the other, either.
Personally, I’m with you if you want to trash the monument, but it might be a good idea to contact Maine’s equivalent of Wisconsin’s DNR, if there is one, and check on your rights. Some government agencies are not to be trifled with.
Renee the link’s not working for me - takes me to a fairly blank picasa search page. It could well be me…
Can the cross be seen from the road? As in, would it’s absence be noticable?
There is no rush and you don’t want to set off a shit storm. Given that there is a bench there, the old owners must have given permission for the whole thing.
I’d wait a bit until you make friends with some of the locals. Then ask a few of them what they think about the situation.
I’d personally remove the old balloons and stuff like that and leave it alone. I’m not a religious person at all either. I wouldn’t spend any time maintaining it either and hope the it would eventually fall apart on its own.
I don’t know anything about the family, unfortunately. Poking around out there, it certainly doesn’t look like it’s being maintained, which is good.
My first thought was to install a nice bench near the site with a little plaque on it. It’d be useful to you, would be a fitting memorial, and keeps that bit of history on the land.
Are you sure no one has been visiting it? I can’t imagine that SpongeBob figurine has been there more than a year without falling off.
Unfortunately it is very visible from the road, so if you do anything it will be readily apparent.
Is that the location where the grandma and kid died? They didn’t live in your house, right? They were just passing over the creek?
ETA: The link is working for me, but I had to click on it twice. It didn’t work the first time.
It it was erected illegally, then perhaps the appropriate authorities would remove it. Then anyone who doesn’t like it can blame the state.
I’m not too worried about this, permits arent really this towns’ thing. No permits required for electrical or Plumbing work, for instance. Ever.
I’m one of the most sympathetic people out there, and I can’t imagine how anyone thinks putting up a memorial IN a creek is acceptable to the property owner. It sounds like a tacky and completely inappropriate thing to do on someone else’s property. If this were the common memorial on the side of the road, I would think it unfeeling if you removed it but this thing is completely different and it’s smack in your property.
I would take it down, store it in a shed somewhere and offer it to anyone who would like to claim it. Also, it’s not like this happened last week.
And you know … after thinking about this a minute, I must say I don’t think much of these roadside memorials at all. The place to remember departed people is at the cemetery, if you’re so inclined. That’s part of the reason why we have them. But people will do what they will do and of course I’d never tell someone how they’re supposed to grieve.