Old Saybrook sits in Middlesex County where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound — about 10,500 people, one ZIP code (06475), and two lighthouses.
The colony's first years were hard ones — Saybrook Fort stood under siege through the winter of 1636-37 during the Pequot War, and the settlement that survived grew slowly outward from the fort into a farming and seafaring town. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Old Saybrook was a working port: shipyards on the coves, oyster beds in the rivers whose names still say so, and captains' and merchants' houses rising around the green — the Hart House of 1767 and the James Pharmacy of 1790 among the survivors, and the South Green itself now a National Register district of that prosperous port century.
Why People Visit Old Saybrook Connecticut
- Relax at Harveys Beach, shallow waters and soft sand for easy family time on Long Island Sound.
- Walk Fort Saybrook Monument Park, interpretive signs marking the 1635 fort site near the marsh and the river mouth.
- Tour the General William Hart House (1767), a Federal-era home with period rooms and gardens reflecting eighteenth-century town life.
- Stroll Saybrook Point, boardwalks and marinas with views to Lynde Point Lighthouse (1803) at the river mouth.
- Visit the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center on Main Street, an intimate restored theater hosting year-round performances.
- Drive across the causeway to Fenwick borough, a quiet shoreline community of shingled houses on the peninsula between South Cove and the Sound.
