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.
So Stratford holds two histories in one harbor: the tide that made an oyster town, and the rotor wash that made an aviation capital. Our Stratford designs gather both into wearable form. From a 1639 oyster harbor to the birthplace of the American helicopter — wear a little of Stratford's Connecticut history.
Why People Visit Stratford Connecticut
Stratford draws visitors with a rare mix of colonial harbor history, Long Island Sound shoreline, and aviation heritage. Travelers find it both a 1639 oyster town with a lighthouse and beaches and the birthplace of the American helicopter, with the quiet, layered character of the Connecticut shore. It is historic, maritime, and unmistakably New England.
