10 Things That Used to Be Completely Normal in Connecticut

There are plenty of things we consider completely normal in Connecticut today that would have been almost impossible for someone living here 50, 100 or even 150 years ago to imagine.

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We have refrigerators, giant supermarkets, highways, smartphones and approximately 9,000 Dunkin' locations. But for a big chunk of Connecticut history, everyday life looked very different.

Some of the things people used to do around the Nutmeg State sound almost ridiculous now. Imagine getting your household ice delivered because you didn't have a refrigerator. Or taking a trolley across town because the automobile hadn't completely taken over yet. And if you wanted to see a movie, you might have driven to a giant outdoor screen and watched it from your car. These weren't quirky historical events. They were just normal life.

Connecticut has changed dramatically over the years, and some of those changes happened so gradually that we forget how strange the old way of doing things would seem today. From milkmen making house calls to enormous department stores serving as destinations, there was a time when everyday life came with routines that have mostly disappeared. Here are 10 things that used to be completely normal in Connecticut that might seem pretty strange to us today.

Fun Bonus Facts

Connecticut was once home to one of the country's biggest ice-harvesting operations - Bantam Lake in Litchfield County produced enormous quantities of natural ice before refrigeration took over. Imagine looking at a frozen lake and thinking, “That’s the grocery store.”

The first hamburger is generally credited to Louis’ Lunch in New Haven - The restaurant says the hamburger was created there in 1900 when a customer needed something he could eat on the go. Connecticut basically helped invent one of the foods Americans now eat while sitting in traffic.

The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was built in Groton - It was commissioned in 1954 and became a major piece of Connecticut's naval history. The state went from stagecoaches to nuclear submarines in a relatively short period of time.