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Clinton Connecticut Vintage Retro Unisex Heavy Crewneck Sweatshirt - Black Logo
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Clinton Connecticut Vintage Retro Unisex Embroidered Cotton Polo - Black Logo
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Clinton Connecticut Holiday Ornament - Harbor Lobster Shack
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Clinton's story starts on the water. Native people fished this stretch of Long Island Sound for generations before English colonists settled the same shore in 1663 — naming their plantation Kenilworth, after the English castle town, a name the salt air wore down to Killingworth within a lifetime. The settlement they planted between the Hammonasset and the Indian River lived by the Sound from its first day: fish, shellfish, salt hay, and the small ships that carried them.
The harbor also launched the town's greatest fortune. Charles Morgan, born on East Main Street in 1795 to a shipowning family, left for New York at fourteen and built an empire remembered as the beginning of American coastal shipping — the first scheduled steamship line from New Orleans to Galveston, routes to Corpus Christi and Havana, iron works on the East River, railroads across Louisiana and Texas, and a running rivalry with Cornelius Vanderbilt himself. Morgan City, Louisiana wears his name. So does the gift he sent home: in 1871 he built Clinton a high school, endowed its upkeep, and the Morgan School — his statue out front — still graduates the town's seniors today.
Why People Visit Clinton
Clinton offers the Connecticut shoreline at its most relaxed — a real harbor town with beaches, marinas, and a colonial Main Street, plus the surprising distinction of being where Yale began. Visitors come for the water, the history, and the easy shoreline pace, and stay for the beaches, the harbor, and the oysters.
