VOLUNTOWN — Sometimes it takes a Bigfoot sighting to steer attention to a small Connecticut town, as Voluntown discovered this year when a Rhode Island man said he saw the legendary sasquatch there.
These days the footsteps are louder and approaching from another quarter — parents hitting Voluntown open houses for places to raise their kids. And it’s not just there, but up and down the Thames River Valley amid a housing squeeze across eastern Connecticut driven by hiring at General Dynamics Electric Boat to build new submarines for the U.S. Navy.
While Groton and New London rank high on the Connecticut list for real estate momentum, that is the case for towns inland from Long Island Sound where homebuyers are able to stretch their purchase dollars further than what they might get closer to the coast or in Rhode Island or Massachusetts…