The Collegiate School's founding here was no accident of geography: its first rector, the Reverend Abraham Pierson, was the town's own minister, and for the school's first years the whole college was wherever Pierson happened to be teaching — his parsonage, in what is now Clinton. He died in 1707 and lies here still; the school moved to Saybrook in 1716 and then to New Haven, taking the name Yale College in 1718 for its benefactor Elihu Yale. Clinton kept the beginning: Pierson's bronze statue stands on East Main Street, and the elementary school around the corner carries his name. For its first fifteen years the college had no campus at all — Yale's oldest classroom, Clinton likes to say, was a minister's front room.
For two centuries the harbor was the whole economy. Clinton built ships, worked farms, and above all harvested the Sound — finfish, shellfish, and especially oysters, which made the town's reputation and filled its wharves. Schooners came and went from the Town Dock, the Indian River carried small craft into the heart of town, and Cedar Island sheltered the anchorage. The oyster is Connecticut's official state shellfish, and harbors like this one are why — and the trade never quite ended: oyster farming still works these waters today. In the late 1800s Connecticut's beds ranked among the most productive oyster grounds anywhere, and Clinton's harbor carried its share of that silver-shelled wealth.
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.
