HILLSBOROUGH — For some folks, the Sawyer Bridge is an iconic piece of Hillsborough's history, but for others, including Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, New Hampshire's so-called “bridge to nowhere” is clear example of the Obama administration's wasteful spending.

“This is the absolute bridge to nowhere if there ever was one,” Romney told a small crowd of supporters Friday in the parking lot of Hillsboro Ford, with the Sawyer Bridge behind him.

But resident Gilman Shattuck, a member of the town's historical society, said the bridge, built in the 1860s, is an icon of New Hampshire's history that was preserved at the request of the people of Hillsborough when the Department of Transportation built a new bridge to replace the span, which once carried traffic on Route 202 across the Contoocook River.

Shattuck said the town has been trying to build a park around the Sawyer Bridge, one of five stone arch bridges in the community, for several years. Hillsborough received $150,000 to restore the bridge through a Transportation Enhancement Program grant, part of the federal stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama.

“This is an icon of Hillsborough's history,” he said. “If you don't preserve these things they'll go away, and when they're gone, they're gone.”

But Romney said the money spent on the project was a waste.

“The stimulus package was one of the largest one-time careless expenditures of government money in history,” said Romney. “We're going to be paying on that debt for years and years and years.”

New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte who campaigned with Romney on Friday, said that spending money to preserve a bridge that can't be used for transportation when millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet was a waste of taxpayers' dollars.

But Holly Shulman, spokeswoman for Obama for America, said past and present Republican Sens. Jack Barnes, Ted Gatsas, John Gallus, Chuck Morse, Russell Prescott and 23 GOP state representatives voted in favor of a 2004 transportation bill that appropriated $138,000 for the Sawyer Bridge in the state's 10-year highway plan.

Locally, opinions differ on the issue.

State Rep. Marjorie Porter of Hillsborough said Romney, as the former governor of Massachusetts, should understand how important historical structures are to New Englanders.

“I look at it as a bridge to our past, not a bridge to nowhere,” said Porter.

But Jane Trainor of Antrim said the government should have put the money into programs to help people get back to work in the long term.

“I'd rather see my money used for creating real jobs,” she said. “There are people in Hillsborough, Antrim, Bennington who haven't seen work in years.”

Bonnie Morse of Hillsborough said the bridge serves no purpose.

“What good is it? You can't get to it, you can't get over it, all you can really do is swim to it,” she said.