The shore completes the picture: Guilford Harbor and its salt marshes between the West River and East Creek, Jacobs Beach on the Sound, Lake Quonnipaug and Bluff Head inland — and three miles offshore, Faulkner’s Light, the 1802 stone tower on Faulkner’s Island that has marked the harbor approach for more than two centuries, the second-oldest light tower in Connecticut.
Guilford grew as an agricultural town — crops, timber, livestock, and orchards on the inland slopes from the very beginning — with shipbuilding on the tidal rivers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and granite quarried along the Guilford–Branford line late in the 1800s, pink-grey stone from the shoreline ledges shipping out to building projects far beyond Connecticut. The Guilford Fair has run every September since 1859 — one of the oldest agricultural fairs in the state.
Why People Visit Guilford Connecticut
- Tour the Henry Whitfield House, the 1639 stone house Reverend Henry Whitfield built the year he founded the town — the oldest stone house in New England, the oldest house in Connecticut, and the first house museum in Connecticut, opened in 1899; operated today as the Henry Whitfield State Museum.
- Walk the Guilford Town Green, the twelve-acre village green laid out by the Twenty-Five Planters in 1639 and still surrounded by the white-clapboard houses of their descendants, with the 1830 Greek Revival First Congregational Church along one edge.
- Tour the Hyland House on Boston Street, the early-eighteenth-century house (long dated by tradition to the 1660s) preserved by the Guilford Keeping Society — one of the finest surviving early New England houses on its original site.
- Tour the Thomas Griswold House, the c.1764 colonial house on the road to Madison, with period furnishings and a working blacksmith shop on the grounds.
- Walk past the Medad Stone Tavern (1803), the Federal-era tavern just north of the green that has been maintained as a museum since the 1960s.
- Look offshore for Faulkner's Light, the 1802 stone tower on Faulkner's Island three miles out in the Sound — the second-oldest active lighthouse in Connecticut, with seasonal Saturday boat tours run by the Faulkner's Light Brigade volunteer group.
- Walk the Westwoods Trails, the forty-mile network of forest trails through ledges, kettle holes, glacial erratics, and beaver wetlands inland from the Sound — the largest preserved hiking area on the central Connecticut shoreline.
- Relax at Jacobs Beach, the small Sound-front town beach with a sandy crescent, picnic groves, and views east to the Madison shoreline.
- Visit Lake Quonnipaug for the inland lake views, the picnic area, and the seasonal swimming and fishing.
- Walk the ledgy granite country out toward the Branford town line — quarry territory in the late nineteenth century, when pink-grey stone cut from these shoreline ledges shipped out to building projects across the country.
- Visit Bishop's Orchards just north of the green for pick-your-own peaches in July and August and apples September through October — a continuous family-run orchard since 1871, five generations operating on the same land.
- Time a visit for the Guilford Fair, the September agricultural fair held on the fairgrounds every year since 1859 — one of the oldest continuous fairs in Connecticut.
- Stop at the Guilford Free Library on Park Street for the local-history room and the genealogy collection, the best public starting point for Guilford colonial research.
