The Connecticut Shoreline

Find Restaurants in these areas..
New London County | Middlesex County | New Haven County | Fairfield County

From Greenwich to Stonington, Connecticut has 125 miles of shoreline, all of it of course on Long Island Sound.  And, from Greenwich to Stonington, many of these towns and cities have their own way of being on that shoreline besides beaches and pleasure boats. There is a wonderful selection of inns, bed & breakfasts, gourmet shops, unique gift shops, and much much more. Visit the town greens, or just take a stroll through the little villages and historic towns.  Scenic drives in and out of the marshes, along the beaches and beautiful waterfront homes and mansions are also a great way to spend the day. But when it’s time to chill out, every one of twenty six shoreline towns and cities has great, great seafood, along with a tremendous assortment of other restaurants for the non-seafood lover... here are a few of our dining guide members..


There are more pictures and some history below these listings on the page ...

A little history on the shoreline...

 A lot has to do with how the water greeting the land in each of those places.  But let’s start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, about 500 million to 250 million years ago, there was a superstar continent called Pangaea.  For 50 million years or so it reined as such until it split into those relatively tiny entities called North America, Africa, and, oh yeah, the Atlantic Ocean.  That was the start of it.  During the time of the dinosaurs, one or possibly two rivers caved out a valley that would one day become Long Island Sound. Then came the glaciers, that was only about 3 million years ago.  (In the intervening period, the Appalachian Mountains were formed and wore down, their sediment forming the Atlantic shoreline.)  The glaciers ultimately melted forming a huge fresh water lake geologists call Lake Connecticut.  So what is now Long Island was merely the south shore of our 200 mile long lake.  Finally, about 15,000 years ago, Lake Connecticut burst through a natural dam at the Race, that body of water between Fischer’s Island and the newly formed Long Island.  The eventual back and forth flow of fresh and salt water is why the Sound is an estuary and that very important for its special environmental value.  Along with the creation of the Island came the oldest, undisputed evidence of human occupation in North America.  Yes, Native Americans were here to watch the birth of Long Island Sound.

The Sound as an estuary is what makes it so special as a natural environment.  All along the coast there are both big and little estuaries within that estuary, places where rivers meet the sound.  These tidal, sheltered waters support unique communities of plants and animals, specially adapted for life at the margins of fresh and salt water. Shoreline communities share in the delights of that environment which include shallow open waters, fresh and salt water marshes, sandy beaches, mud and sand flats, rocky shores, oyster reefs, river deltas, tidal pools, sea grass and kelp beds, and (wooded swamps?).  And these places provide a home for all sorts of wildlife such as shorebirds, seabirds, all kinds or fish and shellfish as well as marine mammals such as otters and harbor seals.

In the past forty years or so Connecticut has become actively aware of the precious nature that this habitat gives us and many state agencies and the dedicated people in them work hard at its protection.

Sometimes however, you can experience special waterfront moments of visual drama such as a full moon rising over the beach, or a storm breaking up at sundown.  Get up early enough and you can see a lighthouse caught in the rays of the early morning sun. In the winter you can discover vista of a salt marsh encrusted in snow.  Then of course there is the action of in our urban harbors.  It all involves being in the right place at the right time, but really, there are lots of those.

Here are a few of many shoreline spots to visit where you can find those special moments: Turtle Creek Wildlife Sanctuary in Old Saybrook, Griswold Point across the Connecticut River in Old Lyme, Hammonasset State Park in Madison, and Sherwood Island State Park in Westport.  Or you can drive to Stonington for ocean breezes and shipbuilder’s houses, Norwalk Harbor for the Maritime Center, Mystic for the Seaport Museum, Branford and Guilford for the Thimble Islands and the wetland vistas on Leetes Island Road.
 

top