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The Pequot people lived along these coves and rivers long before the colonists — their presence at the Gungywamp site inland reaches back thousands of years. Groton was settled as part of New London and incorporated as its own town in 1705, growing into one of New England's busy Thames-River shipbuilding and whaling ports. On September 6, 1781, that prosperity made it a target: a British force under the turncoat Benedict Arnold raided the Thames, and at Fort Griswold roughly 165 Connecticut militia under Colonel William Ledyard made an outnumbered last stand. They were overwhelmed, and most of the defenders fell. The town never forgot them — in 1830 it raised a 135-foot granite obelisk, the Groton Monument, over the battlefield to the dead. A U.S. Navy yard followed on the Thames in 1868, and in the twentieth century Groton became the cradle of the American submarine.
Today the deep harbor that drew the shipwrights and the Navy still defines Groton. The Submarine Force Museum berths the Nautilus on the Thames; Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park keeps the monument and the memory; and the coast opens out at Bluff Point, Eastern Point Beach, and Avery Point, where the last lighthouse built in Connecticut still stands above Long Island Sound. Groton is Connecticut's hard-edged maritime soul — monuments, harbors, and the deep water that made all of it possible.
Why People Visit Groton Connecticut
Groton draws people who love the sea and the stories that come with it. It is the Submarine Capital of the World, with the first nuclear submarine open to walk through; it is a Revolutionary battlefield with a monument to its fallen; and it is a working shoreline of deep harbor, forts, beaches, and lighthouse points. Visitors come for the rare combination — naval history you can stand inside, colonial history you can climb, and a Connecticut coast you can walk all in one town on the Thames.
