Stamford grew up on the water. Through the colonial and early American years it lived by merchandising by sea — trading down the Sound to New York and out to the West Indies — and by the farms and mills inland. It saw a quieter echo of the Salem hysteria in a 1692 witch trial, sent the town of Darien off on its own in 1820, and by the mid-1800s had the railroad and the harbor working together. Today it is Connecticut's second-largest city, a Long Island Sound port about thirty-five miles up the shore from Manhattan.
In 1868 Yale & Towne began making Yale locks here, and Stamford became a manufacturing city as much as a harbor one. The rail line to New York turned it into a commuter town and, later, a corporate-headquarters city — but underneath the office towers it is still the harbor town on the Sound, with the oyster beds, the lighthouse of 1882, and Shippan Point reaching out into the water.
Why People Visit Stamford, CT
Stamford balances harbor and city — sailboats on the Sound, a downtown skyline, and four centuries of history from Rippowam to the rail line. It is a Gold Coast harbor town an hour from Manhattan, with the water, the parks, and that one-of-a-kind church on the hill.
