Groton Connecticut Vintage Retro Cotton Jersey Baby Bodysuit - Black Logo

What's with Gungywamp? Tucked in the woods inland from the harbor is one of the strangest-looking places in Connecticut — a hundred-acre site of stone chambers, old foundations, and a double ring of laid stones called Gungywamp, now a State Archaeological Preserve. Because the chambers are low and stone-roofed, and because one of them catches a shaft of sunlight through a small opening at the equinox, the site has drawn a century of romantic theories — Irish monks, Norse voyagers, ancient astronomers. The archaeology tells a quieter story: Native people used this land for thousands of years, and the stone structures themselves are colonial-era — root cellars that worked like early refrigerators, and a double stone circle that was almost certainly a mill for grinding bark or grain. The equinox light through the chamber window is real, and genuinely lovely; the lost civilization is not. Gungywamp is Groton's reminder that the most interesting history is usually the true one.

Our Groton logo carries the same emblem every Merlin Classics Connecticut town wears — an oyster above "Connecticut, Est. 1636," the colony's founding year, rendered in hand-printed black and white with a worn, vintage feel. The oyster is the shoreline state's mark, the through-line that ties Groton to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Groton is everything around it: the submarine harbor, the monument on the heights, the deep Thames water. On a tee or a cap it reads less like a souvenir and more like a small piece of the Connecticut coast — Est. 1636, worn plain.

Why People Visit Groton Connecticut

• Tour the free Submarine Force Museum and step aboard the Historic Ship Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, berthed on the Thames.
• Walk the ramparts of Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park and climb the 135-foot Groton Monument for views over the harbor.
• Hike or bike the wooded trails of Bluff Point State Park out to its tidal coves and rocky point.
• Visit Avery Point — the Branford House mansion, the University of Connecticut campus lawns, and Avery Point Light, the last lighthouse built in Connecticut.
• Relax at Eastern Point Beach, a small family cove with breakwater views across the river mouth.
• Take a guided tour of the Gungywamp State Archaeological Preserve to see its colonial stone chambers and double stone circle.