East Haven came of age during the Revolution. In July 1779 a British force under General William Tryon landed along the shore and struck at Black Rock Fort in Morris Cove before marching on New Haven — the war reaching right onto East Haven's beaches. The town remembers the other side of that year too: the Marquis de Lafayette and his troops encamped on the Green, and Lafayette thought enough of the place to return and visit it again decades later, in 1824. Salt for the army, men for the cause, and a French general on the common — the Revolution left its mark on the little shoreline parish.
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.
