The town took its modern name in the nineteenth century. Incorporated and renamed Clinton in 1838 in honor of DeWitt Clinton — the New York governor whose Erie Canal had just remade American commerce — it carried its shipbuilding, fishing, and oystering trades through the 1800s, when the Connecticut shoreline was dotted with busy little maritime villages much like it. The town was hardly alone in the choice; the canal-builder's name was attached to towns across the young country in those years. Main Street filled in with shops, churches, and the comfortable houses of sea captains and tradesmen, and the rhythm of the harbor set the pace of the whole community, season after season.
For two centuries the harbor was the whole economy. Clinton built ships, worked farms, and above all harvested the Sound — finfish, shellfish, and especially oysters, which made the town's reputation and filled its wharves. Schooners came and went from the Town Dock, the Indian River carried small craft to the open water, and generations of Clinton families made their living from the tides. Clinton oysters were prized up and down the coast, and the shallow, sheltered grounds off the harbor were worked and re-seeded by hand, season after season, the way the best beds always had been. It was a classic Connecticut shoreline town: modest, hardworking, and entirely shaped by the bay it sat beside.
Why People Visit Clinton
Clinton offers the Connecticut shoreline at its most relaxed — a real harbor town with beaches, marinas, and a colonial Main Street, plus the surprising distinction of being where Yale began. Visitors come for the water, the history, and the easy shoreline pace, and stay for the beaches, the harbor, and the small-town New England feel. From the Town Dock to the Town Green, it rewards an unhurried afternoon. It is briny, historic, and genuinely Connecticut.
