Sandy Hook: Mills at the Edge of Newtown

Sandy Hook is a village within Newtown, Connecticut, settled around seventeen eleven shortly after the town itself was incorporated. Colonists settled on land of the Native Pootatuck people, and Sandy Hook was among the first outlying areas to fill in, because the Pootatuck River here offered reliable water power for saw and gristmills.

For most of its history Sandy Hook was a quiet mill village, its identity folded inside the larger town of Newtown. It became known nationally in December two thousand twelve, and the community's name is now attached to an event that the town continues to carry with great care. The village today holds close to its wooded, small-town character along the banks of the same river that brought the first settlers here three hundred years ago.