Then, in 1939, Stratford changed the world's idea of flight. Igor Sikorsky's VS-300 made the first practical helicopter flight here on September 14, and the town became the cradle of the American helicopter — every presidential Marine One has been built in Stratford since 1957. For a small Connecticut harbor, it is an outsized claim to fame: the place where the helicopter went from dream to working machine, on the same riverbank where oyster sloops had worked the tide two centuries before.
Our Stratford logo carries that oyster shell over "1636," the year of the Connecticut Colony and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Connecticut place. Printed black-and-white with the worn look of an old oyster-crate label or a seaside sign, the shell reads as shoreline Connecticut: the harbor, the Sound, the long maritime past. What makes this one Stratford is the place behind it — the 1639 oyster town, the lighthouse on the Sound, Shakespeare's namesake on the Housatonic, and the birthplace of the American helicopter.
Why People Visit Stratford Connecticut
- Tour Boothe Memorial Park, a 32-acre former estate with an eclectic collection of historic buildings on the Housatonic.
- Visit the Captain David Judson House (1750), the Stratford Historical Society's colonial Georgian home.
- See Stratford Point Light, the lighthouse marking the mouth of the river on Long Island Sound.
- Relax at the Lordship beaches and seawall, facing out onto the Sound.
- Explore the National Helicopter Museum and the Connecticut Air & Space Center, telling the town's aviation story.
