That trolley line is East Haven's quiet claim to fame. Today the Shore Line Trolley Museum keeps the Branford Electric Railway running — the oldest continuously operating suburban trolley line in the United States — carrying riders on century-old streetcars along the same shoreline route, past Farm River and its tidal marshes. The town itself has long since become a New Haven-area shoreline suburb, with its beaches on Long Island Sound, its greens and ball fields, and the easy rhythm of a coastal town. But the trolley still clangs along the marsh, a living thread back to the iron-works village that started it all.
In 1707 the parish shed its old name and became East Haven. The town that grew up around the Green took its lasting shape in 1774, when colonists raised the Old Stone Church — First Congregational — a steepled fieldstone meetinghouse that still stands as one of the oldest stone churches in New England. The Town Green spread out before it, a small common that would gather the town's monuments, its bandstand, and, much later, an oak grown from a sapling sent by President Theodore Roosevelt. The church and the Green remain the historic heart of East Haven.
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.
