Stonington Connecticut Vintage Retro Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee - White Logo

The town beneath these stories is one of Connecticut's oldest. Settled in 1649 on the Pequot coastal homeland and established as a town in 1662, Stonington incorporated its village core as a borough in 1801 — the oldest borough in the state. By 1842 its small fleet of fishing, whaling, and sealing vessels traded busily enough that the federal government made the harbor a port of entry, and the little granite Customs House still faces Main Street just north of Cannon Square. In the decades that followed, Portuguese fishing families made the borough their own, and their Blessing of the Fleet each July remains the harbor's great annual rite.

Today the borough remains what it has quietly been for two centuries: one square mile of Federal and Greek Revival houses behind picket fences, the two surviving 18-pounders in Cannon Square still pointing at the harbor they defended, the 1840 granite lighthouse at the end of the point — since 1925 the oldest lighthouse museum in America — and, each December, a Christmas tree built entirely of lobster traps rising by the Town Dock.

Why People Visit Stonington Connecticut

• Tour the Old Lighthouse Museum at 7 Water Street, the 1840 granite lighthouse that since 1925 has been the oldest lighthouse museum in America, holding the original sixteen-star battle flag from 1814.
• Visit Cannon Square, where the two surviving 18-pounder cannons that defended the borough in 1814 still point toward the harbor entrance.
• See the Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House at 40 Palmer Street, home of the 21-year-old sea captain who first sighted Antarctica in 1820.
• Relax on DuBois Beach, sandy cove at the tip of the borough with views across Fishers Island Sound to Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York.
• Walk Water Street, tree-lined with white picket fences, antique shops, and historic sea captains' homes.
• Watch the working fleet at Town Dock, Connecticut's last commercial fishing fleet, with views of the harbor and surrounding islands.
• Explore the historic American Velvet Mill on Bayview Avenue, built in 1888 to attract new industry to the borough. The American Velvet Company opened there in 1892 and at its 1950s peak was the largest velvet producer in the United States, operating roughly 300 broad looms with around 450 workers. The company moved operations to Virginia late in the 20th century, and the building has since been repurposed as a maker space.
• Come in December for the Lobster Trap Tree by the Town Dock — the borough's internationally photographed Christmas tree built entirely of stacked lobster traps.