What's with Savin Rock? For nearly a century it was the brightest place on Long Island Sound. Savin Rock was West Haven's seaside amusement park — ‘Connecticut's Coney Island,’ the ‘playground of New England’ — a waterfront packed with wooden roller coasters, a carousel, a midway, and a long lighted pier reaching out over the water. In its early-1900s heyday they called it the ‘White City’ for the thousands of electric bulbs that turned night into day, and at its peak more than a million people a year came to ride, to stroll the boardwalk, and to eat fried clams by the Sound. The rides are gone now — the park closed in 1966 — but the boardwalk still runs, and the name still carries the whole summer with it.
West Haven is older than its amusement park by three hundred years. The shoreline belonged to the Quinnipiac people long before English settlers from the New Haven Colony laid out farms here in 1648 and called the place ‘West Farms.’ For generations it was a quiet district of oystermen and farmers on the west side of New Haven Harbor. It joined with North Milford to form the town of Orange in 1822, then set off on its own in 1921 to become the Town of West Haven — Connecticut's youngest — and was chartered as a city in 1961. One of the state's oldest settlements wears the title of its newest city.
Why People Visit West Haven
West Haven appeals with simple shoreline beauty and strong local pride. Visitors pair long beach and boardwalk walks with small museums, the historic Green, and the nostalgia of Savin Rock. It is relaxed, local, and close to the water, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces. The vintage-summer feeling of the old amusement park is evergreen, and history and everyday shoreline life sit side by side in a welcoming way.
