The Quinnipiac and Fair Haven: A brief social history
There was once a place called Dragon, in the east. A place where oysters thrived and Quinnipiac arrowheads could be found simply by tilling the soil of your garden. It got its name for the seals that once played and warmed themselves at the entrance to the bordering river. “The sailors called them sea-dragons and hence dubbed the waterway Dragon River,” remarks local historian Doris B. Townshend in the opening pages of Fair Haven: A Journey Through Time (1976).
With the seals long gone—the oysters mostly, too—the river’s taken a newer name, from another historic population: the Quinnipiac. And where the Dragon of old has sunken into the annals of history, Fair Haven has risen in its place.