Our Waterford logo carries Connecticut's clam shell above "Connecticut — Est. 1636," the shared retro emblem of our Connecticut towns; the shell speaks to the shoreline, and 1636 marks the founding of the Connecticut Colony itself — not the town, which came much later, in 1801. Rendered in worn black-and-white, like an old oyster-crate label or seaside signage, it ties Waterford to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Waterford is the story behind it — the granite, the gardens of Harkness, and the long light off the Sound.
Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, Waterford gained a palace by the sea. Edward and Mary Harkness — heirs to a Standard Oil fortune — built Eolia, a forty-two-room Renaissance Revival mansion, on a green point above the Sound around 1907. They laid out formal gardens, later refined by the great landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, and spent their summers there among the boxwood and the salt air. Mary Harkness left the estate to Connecticut, and in the 1950s it became Harkness Memorial State Park — its lawns, gardens, and water tower now open to anyone who wants to walk down to the water.
Why People Visit Waterford
Visitors come to Waterford for an unspoiled stretch of the Connecticut coast: the gardens and mansion at Harkness, a famous playwriting center, granite-walled woods, and rocky beaches on Long Island Sound. It sits minutes from New London and the Mystic shoreline, with two state parks holding long reaches of open coast. Equal parts heritage and easy beach time, Waterford rewards anyone who likes the shore quiet and the history close at hand.
