The islands carry the town's best story. By long local legend, the privateer Captain William Kidd hid gold among the Thimbles before his capture in 1701 — names like Money Island and Kidd's Cove still nod to the tale, though no treasure has ever turned up. Most of the islets are private homes now, their cottages perched on bare pink rock, and the best way to see them is from one of the tour boats that thread out of Stony Creek harbor on a summer afternoon.
The granite years made Stony Creek. Quarry workers came from Italy, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, and Finland to cut the stone, and the village around them filled with Victorian cottages and summer hotels. Offshore lay its loveliest asset: the Thimble Islands, a scatter of glacial pink-granite islets — some 365 of them — first set down in Branford's town records in 1739, said to be named for the thimbleberry. Stony Creek even raised its own fife-and-drum tradition, going back to 1886.
Why People Visit Branford
Branford blends village greens with island-dotted coves. Visitors mix easy boat rides with libraries, beaches, and shoreline paths, all on Long Island Sound. It is peaceful, nautical, and neighborly, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces. Colonial shoreline history and everyday Connecticut life sit side by side here in a welcoming way, from the Town Green to the granite docks at Stony Creek.
