Southbury, Connecticut: Heritage Village and the Western Hills
Southbury is a town of about 19,836 people in western New Haven County, positioned along the Pomperaug River where it meets the Housatonic. The town gained national attention in the 1960s when Heritage Village, one of the first large-scale planned retirement communities in the United States, was developed on its eastern side. Heritage Village eventually grew to house thousands of residents in condominiums and townhouses, and its population significantly affects the town's demographic profile, skewing older than most Connecticut towns.
The landscape here is hillier than the coastal areas, with the Southbury Training School's former campus occupying several hundred acres of open land that the town has debated repurposing for years. Kettletown State Park, on the shore of Lake Zoar (a dammed section of the Housatonic River), provides camping, hiking, and swimming. The park's name comes from a colonial-era land transaction in which local Pootatuck people reportedly received a brass kettle as payment.
Route 67 and I-84 both pass through Southbury, connecting the town to Waterbury, Danbury, and points beyond. A commercial strip along Main Street South includes grocery stores, banks, and restaurants, though the town lacks a dense downtown core. Southbury briefly made national news in 1937 when a Nazi-affiliated group attempted to establish a training camp here, an effort that was blocked by residents who passed a zoning ordinance specifically to prevent it.
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Southbury is a town of about 19,836 people in western New Haven County, positioned along the Pomperaug River where it meets the Housatonic. The town gained national attention in the 1960s when Heritage Village, one of the first large-scale planned retirement communities in the United States, was developed on its eastern side. Heritage Village eventually grew to house thousands of residents in condominiums and townhouses, and its population significantly affects the town's demographic profile, skewing older than most Connecticut towns.
The landscape here is hillier than the coastal areas, with the Southbury Training School's former campus occupying several hundred acres of open land that the town has debated repurposing for years. Kettletown State Park, on the shore of Lake Zoar (a dammed section of the Housatonic River), provides camping, hiking, and swimming. The park's name comes from a colonial-era land transaction in which local Pootatuck people reportedly received a brass kettle as payment.
Route 67 and I-84 both pass through Southbury, connecting the town to Waterbury, Danbury, and points beyond. A commercial strip along Main Street South includes grocery stores, banks, and restaurants, though the town lacks a dense downtown core. Southbury briefly made national news in 1937 when a Nazi-affiliated group attempted to establish a training camp here, an effort that was blocked by residents who passed a zoning ordinance specifically to prevent it.
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