Towering over the treeline on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation is a Vegas-style megaresort. Foxwoods Resort Casino Source: littlenySTOCK / shutterstock Foxwoods Resort Casino In between, Ledyard boasts pastoral orchards, a historic house museum and the last working 19th-century sawmill in the state. There’s seafaring heritage of an older kind at Mystic, which has one of the top maritime museums in the United States, a world-beating aquarium and a main street made for pottering around. In the opposite direction at Groton is the region’s primary submarine base, with a real nuclear sub you can board.

Right in the town is the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, commanded by the immense Foxwoods Resort Casino, with its monolithic hotel towers and endless gaming, dining, entertainment and shopping. Around Ledyard in New London County are the kind of attractions that draw people from near and far.