The settlement came first, in 1638. When the New Haven Colony bought up the land along the Sound, the eastern shore of the harbor was set aside as farmland and called, plainly, East Farms — a parish of New Haven worked by colonists who built wharves, planted fields, and fished the tidal marshes. For its first century the place answered to New Haven in everything: its church, its government, its land. But the iron furnace, the salt works, and the steady growth of the village gave East Farms an identity of its own, and a long, patient campaign to become a town in its own right.
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.
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.
