This Charming Connecticut City Is Perfect For A Quiet, Coastal New England Getaway

In so many ways, Milford is your classic New England town: Its center is made up of stately old buildings, and you'll find both a steepled white church and a gazebo on the green. A nice range of independent restaurants is clustered around Broad Street, and water tumbles over a manmade waterfall in the Lower Duck Pond, a favorite muse for photographers. The Milford Arts Council maintains a multipurpose space, which includes a theater and art gallery, inside a converted train station, and three preserved 18th-century buildings house the Milford Historical Society. Take all the elements that rural New England is known for, and you'll find them here.

Better yet, Milford is located right on the water. Here, the Housatonic River feeds into Long Island Sound; the marina in Milford Harbor is busy with boats, and the Milford Yacht Club has been active for more than a century. Visitors to Milford can pick from several nearby beaches, including Fort Trumbull Beach and Gulf Beach, which lie within a mile of downtown. Gulf Beach has an attractive pier, which is a favorite spot for anglers, along with picnic benches and well-trod sands. Further boardwalks invite walkers and cyclists to enjoy Silver Sands State Park, and birders can set their sights on the marshlands of the Charles E. Wheeler Wildlife Area, just down the road.

One of the best parts of Milford is its location: The town is located in New Haven County, just 60 miles from Manhattan. It's a bucolic escape from New York City's madding crowds, feeling much remoter than it is. You could easily add it to a road trip route along the beautiful New England coast.

Milford was founded in 1639, making it one of the oldest towns in what would become the United States. Milford has many unique landmarks: The Robert Treat Memorial Tower looks like a medieval turret. The Continental Army used Liberty Rock as a lookout point for spotting redcoats during the American Revolution. Certain houses date back centuries, and the town library now stands where the eponymous grinding mill used to be. For most of its long life, Milford has quietly gone about its business. Few of us would recognize the important figures to come out of Milford, and the town plays second fiddle to New Haven, the famous Connecticut cultural hub and home of Yale University. New Haven attracts untold numbers of visitors each year, who are drawn to such institutions as Long Wharf, the Yale Peabody Museum, and its world-famous "apizza" pizzerias.

Still, Milford has grown into a sizable town of 50,000 residents, and it's routinely described as a "city." It's just a few miles away from Bridgeport, the Connecticut headquarters of the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Ferry, so travelers from Long Island can easily pop over and explore the town. I-95 runs right past Milford, making it a reasonable stop on a drive through Connecticut; this Interstate is the most important on the Eastern Seaboard, and road trippers routinely take it from New York to Providence and Boston. While Connecticut is a relatively small state, those two hours of highway driving can drag on, so Milford makes for a handy pit stop for a stretch and a meal. You can also get there on secondary roads if you're trying to avoid the most dangerous highway on your East Coast road trip.

If you're in New York City, getting to Milford is as easy as hopping the train: The Metro-North Railroad stops at the town's train station on its way to New Haven, taking only 90 minutes each way. The platform stands only blocks from Milford's business district, so you won't need a rental car nor a taxi to get situated. Note that most accommodations are located in the eastern and western suburbs, and they vary in price from $60 to $250 per night. If you're patient, you can use Milford Transit's city buses to get around.

Drivers with GPS should make sure they double-check their destination, because New England is full of Milfords. There's a Milford in Massachusetts and another in New Hampshire, and travelers could absentmindedly head in the wrong direction for miles before realizing their mistake. Even more confusing is New Milford, Connecticut, which is another charming village at the eastern edge of the state, not far from the New York state border. This is another worthy destination, but it's about an hour north and nowhere near the water. If you can't get enough of these accessible little enclaves, check out Redding, Connecticut, a scenic small town that some call "Vermont within 60 miles of NYC."