Haley Farm, Brook Street, Groton, New London County, CT

Significance: Haley Farm State Park possesses local significance as a well-preserved and increasingly rare historic agricultural landscape. Local artifact finds and professional inspection indicate that the site has potential to yield significant archeological information pertaining to prehistoric occupation of the site. During the historic period, the area was established as a farm soon after John Winthrop, Jr., the first governor of Connecticut, acquired the property as part of a large land grant in 1648. The most significant subsequent owner of the farm was Caleb Haley, a prominent New York City fish dealer, who purchased over 400 acres of the former Winthrop Farm in 1868. It was Haley who constructed the massive stone walls and established the fields and meadows that remain distinctive features of the park today. The property served as a working farm until 1971 when the State of Connecticut acquired the land. Although no buildings remain standing, the park retains its appearance as an agricultural landscape through the existence of field stone foundations of several seventeenth and eighteenth century farmhouses and barns, open meadows that once served as crop fields and cattle grazing lands, fieldstone walls, and stands of mature and new-growth hardwood trees that line the borders of the meadows.
Survey number: HABS CT-460
Building/structure dates: 1868 Initial Construction