Our East Haven logo carries the Connecticut shoreline shell above "Connecticut — Est. 1636," the shared retro emblem of our Connecticut towns; the shell stands for the oystering and salt-marsh coast East Haven grew up on, and 1636 marks the founding of the Connecticut Colony itself, not the town — East Haven's own story runs from East Farms in 1638 to its own town charter in 1785. Rendered in worn black-and-white, like a stamp on an oyster crate or a coastal sign, it ties East Haven to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one East Haven is the story behind it — the first iron, the stone church, and the oldest trolley line in America.
The settlement came first, in 1638. When the New Haven Colony bought up the land along the Sound, the eastern shore of the harbor was set aside as farmland and called, plainly, East Farms — a parish of New Haven worked by colonists who built wharves, planted fields, and fished the tidal marshes. For its first century the place answered to New Haven in everything: its church, its government, its land. But the iron furnace, the salt works, and the steady growth of the village gave East Farms an identity of its own, and a long, patient campaign to become a town in its own right.
Why People Visit East Haven
Visitors come to East Haven for an unhurried slice of the Connecticut shore: a ride on a hundred-year-old trolley, a stroll past one of New England's oldest stone churches, and an afternoon on a quiet Sound-side beach. Salt marshes and shoreline trails sit a few minutes from the Town Green, and New Haven's museums and harbor are right next door. Equal parts colonial heritage and easy coastal living, East Haven rewards anyone drawn to the working shoreline of Long Island Sound.
