About the Farm River Estuary

 The Farm River Estuary is a wild, pristine and enormously complex productive, and fragile estuarine ecosystem with wooded uplands, high quality fresh water, and brackish tidal marshes. These picturesque floodplains, coves, and inlets provide a critical natural habitat for an immense variety of microbes, plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, shellfish and mammals that rely on it for food, water, and shelter, especially during migration and breeding.

    The Farm River Estuary also forms the southern end of an important migratory flyway that extends north through the center of Connecticut and Massachusetts into northern New England and Canada. The Farm River has been used for navigation by a fertilizer factory, stone quarry, paper mill, saloon, salt hay harvesters, fisherman and boating enthusiasts.  

(courtesy of Friends of the Farm River)

More information about Friends of the Farm River can be found at friendsoffarmriver.org

USGS National Water Information System – Farm River at The Shore Line Trolley Museum
East Haven, CT

The Shore Line Trolley Museum is host to one of over 1.9 million sites across the United States and it’s territories.  “The USGS investigates the occurrence, quality, quantity, distribution, and movement of surface and underground waters and disseminates the data to public, State and local governments, public and private utilities, and other Federal agencies involved with managing our water resources” according to the USGS official website.  

The museum is one of three locations used to monitor the Farm River Estuary and real time data from our site can be found HERE.