What's with Gungywamp? Tucked in the woods inland from the harbor is one of the strangest-looking places in Connecticut — a hundred-acre site of stone chambers, old foundations, and a double ring of laid stones called Gungywamp, now a State Archaeological Preserve. Because the chambers are low and stone-roofed, and because one of them catches a shaft of sunlight through a small opening at the equinox, the site has drawn a century of romantic theories — Irish monks, Norse voyagers, ancient astronomers. The archaeology tells a quieter story: Native people used this land for thousands of years, and the stone structures themselves are colonial-era — root cellars that worked like early refrigerators, and a double stone circle that was almost certainly a mill for grinding bark or grain. The equinox light through the chamber window is real, and genuinely lovely; the lost civilization is not. Gungywamp is Groton's reminder that the most interesting history is usually the true one.
Today Groton is known the world over for its submarines, and at home for its monument, its harbor, and its shoreline parks. Its story blends Pequot beginnings, colonial shipbuilding, Revolutionary sacrifice, and the nuclear age that began on its waterfront. Our Groton designs gather that identity into wearable form — the Submarine Capital, the Thames, the Connecticut coast. Explore the collection and carry a little of Groton's depths with you.
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.
