Map of Canaan, Connecticut in 2026

If you grew up in Canaan, or you’ve ever spent a summer evening at a concert on Music Mountain, you’ll find your town on this map just as it stands in 2026. Look for your road. South Canaan Road, Point of Rocks Road, Lime Rock Road, Barnes Road, Huntsville South Canaan Road, Music Mountain Road, Belden Street, Sand Road, Page Road, Cobble Road, Johnson Road, River Road and Lower Barrack Road are all printed by name, right up to Canaan Mountain Road.

Canaan is in Litchfield County, in the northwest corner of Connecticut.

KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey data, and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded hills, from Pine Grove down to the Housatonic River, come from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets and the town line come from the Census Bureau. Falls Village, South Canaan, Huntsville, Lower City and Pine Grove are all printed by name. A guide of 19 numbered landmarks runs along the bottom, with the National Register sites marked, and we checked those against National Park Service records.

Canaan, 1739

The title panel on the map reads Incorporated 1739. The year before, the land was sold at auction in New London as part of the Western Lands sale, and the first proprietors cleared it and built some of the first homes in the area. The name comes from the Hebrew name for an ancient region of the Southern Levant. It’s a separate town from North Canaan, its neighbor to the north, though that land was once part of Canaan, and it has no tie to New Canaan down in Fairfield County. The Housatonic River forms the town’s western edge, with Salisbury on the other bank.

For more than a hundred years Canaan had a large part in the iron industry of the northwest corner. The town built stack furnaces for the iron ore mined in nearby Salisbury. When the iron business faded at the end of the 1800s, Canaan settled into the quiet town it still is. Click here to learn more about the history of Canaan.

Falls Village

Most people simply call the town Falls Village, after its main village, and the Falls Village post office covers the whole town. The village takes its name from the Great Falls, a waterfall on the Housatonic River. On the map it sits on the river in the west, where most of the guide numbers gather.

The Falls Village District (5) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It covers about 70 acres that were built up in the middle of the 1800s, after the Housatonic Railroad picked the village as a station stop in the early 1830s. The district has 71 buildings in the Greek Revival, Italianate and Queen Anne styles, along with the canal that was dug to use the water power of the Great Falls. One of its buildings is the David M. Hunt Library (6), built in 1891. Around it are the Town Green (1), Canaan Town Hall (13), the Falls Village Post Office (16), the Falls Village Congregational Church (18) and the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department (9). Lee H. Kellogg School (14), the town’s school for kindergarten through eighth grade, is close by.

The guide lists the town’s historical society as the Canaan Historical Society (17). Today it goes by the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society, and its museum is in the old train depot at 44 Railroad Street. The society also owns the New Haven caboose that’s a landmark in the village, and it keeps up the Beebe Hill Schoolhouse on Beebe Hill Road, open for tours on summer Saturday mornings.

South Canaan and the Holabird House

South Canaan is printed by name near the middle of town. The South Canaan Congregational Church (19) stands there, at the corner of Route 63 and Barnes Road. It was built in 1804 and is one of three Connecticut churches modeled on a 1793 church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, designed by Charles Bulfinch. When it went up, the spot was close to the geographic center of Canaan, which then still took in the land that later became North Canaan. The church was listed on the National Register in 1983. The historical society owns it now as the South Canaan Meetinghouse, and uses it for lectures and the yearly Peddlers Flea Market.

The Holabird House (2) is on Kellog Road, just north of Route 126. Timothy Holabird, one of Canaan’s earliest settlers, built the oldest part around 1740. It’s one of the oldest buildings left in town, a well preserved Georgian house with a central chimney, and it was listed on the National Register in 1982.

Music Mountain

Music Mountain (3) is up Music Mountain Road in the south of town. The violinist Jacques Gordon founded it in 1930 as the permanent home of his Gordon String Quartet. Gordon had been concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony from 1921 to 1930. Audiences have been coming every summer since, and The New Yorker once called it “the summer shrine of the string quartet.”

Concerts are held in Gordon Hall, which was built long and narrow like a violin and seats about 350 people. The four houses around it are named for the instruments of a string quartet. They’re mail order buildings from Sears, Roebuck and Company, built in 1930, and the whole campus is on the National Register. Jacques Gordon’s son, Nicholas Gordon, led Music Mountain from 1974 until 2017 and arranged broadcasts of its concerts that reached listeners in 45 countries.

The High School and the Woods

Housatonic Valley Regional High School (10) opened in the fall of 1939 as the first regional high school in New England. The new district bought the old Lorch farm, where the Salmon Kill meets the Housatonic River, for $8,000. Today the school serves six towns: Canaan, Cornwall, Kent, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon. Steve Blass, who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1971 World Series, was drafted out of the school.

Much of the rest of the guide is woods and open land. Housatonic State Forest (7) reaches into the north end of town, and Canaan Mountain Preserve (8) and a Nature Conservancy property (4) are up in the northeast. Dean’s Ravine (11) is in the southwest, and Page Road Swamp (12) and Great Mountain Forest (15) round out the list.

This map of Canaan makes a handsome addition to a living room, office, library or den, and it can even help teach children the geography and history of the town. It’s a thoughtful gift for anyone who calls Canaan home, grew up in Falls Village, or moved away. Created by KNOWOL in 2026, it’s printed on museum quality archival paper in three sizes. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Canaan map.

Sources

• Canaan, ConnecticutHistory.org
• Canaan, Connecticut, Wikipedia
• Falls Village, Connecticut, Wikipedia
• The Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society
• South Canaan Congregational Church, Wikipedia
• Holabird House, Wikipedia
• About Music Mountain, Music Mountain
• Music Mountain Summer Chamber Music Festival, Wikipedia
• Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Wikipedia