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.
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.
Why People Visit Groton Connecticut
- Tour the free Submarine Force Museum and step aboard the Historic Ship Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, berthed on the Thames.
- Walk the ramparts of Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park and climb the 135-foot Groton Monument for views over the harbor.
- Hike or bike the wooded trails of Bluff Point State Park out to its tidal coves and rocky point.
- Visit Avery Point — the Branford House mansion, the University of Connecticut campus lawns, and Avery Point Light, the last lighthouse built in Connecticut.
- Relax at Eastern Point Beach, a small family cove with breakwater views across the river mouth.
- Take a guided tour of the Gungywamp State Archaeological Preserve to see its colonial stone chambers and double stone circle.
