The Paugussett who lived along the Housatonic called this shore Cupheag — "place of shelter." In 1639 a group of Puritan families led by the Reverend Adam Blakeman settled at the river's mouth, and in 1643 the town was formally named Stratford, for Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon in England. For its first two centuries Stratford lived off the water: oystering and shipbuilding on the Housatonic, wharves and fishing boats, the 1750 Georgian house of Captain David Judson still standing as a reminder of the colonial harbor town.
Then, in 1939, Stratford changed the world's idea of flight. Igor Sikorsky's VS-300 made the first practical helicopter flight here on September 14, and the town became the cradle of the American helicopter — every presidential Marine One has been built in Stratford since 1957. For a small Connecticut harbor, it is an outsized claim to fame: the place where the helicopter went from dream to working machine, on the same riverbank where oyster sloops had worked the tide two centuries before.
Why People Visit Stratford Connecticut
- Tour Boothe Memorial Park, a 32-acre former estate with an eclectic collection of historic buildings on the Housatonic.
- Visit the Captain David Judson House (1750), the Stratford Historical Society's colonial Georgian home.
- See Stratford Point Light, the lighthouse marking the mouth of the river on Long Island Sound.
- Relax at the Lordship beaches and seawall, facing out onto the Sound.
- Explore the National Helicopter Museum and the Connecticut Air & Space Center, telling the town's aviation story.
