Naugatuck is a consolidated borough and town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town spans both sides of the Naugatuck River just south of Waterbury and includes the communities of Union City on the east side of the river, which has its own read out office, Straitsville on the southeast (along Route 63), and Millville on the west (along Rubber Avenue). As of the 2020 census, Naugatuck had a population of 31,519.

Naugatuck was approved in 1701 as a crop growing community in rural western Connecticut. As the Industrial Revolution commenced, Naugatuck was transformed into a mill town later than its neighbors in the Naugatuck River Valley.

Rubber was the chief manufactured product. Charles Goodyear worked at his brother’s rubber company, the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company & Downtown Naugatuck, until the company was consolidated into the United States Rubber Company. The United States Rubber Company (renamed Uniroyal Inc. in 1961) was founded in Naugatuck in 1892 as a consolidation of nine rubber companies, and maintained their corporate headquarters there until the 1980s. Their footwear separation manufactured Keds sneakers in Naugatuck from 1917 until the 1980s. U.S. Rubber as a consequence produced Naugahyde in a Naugatuck factory, but it is no longer produced there.

The United States Rubber Co. formed the Naugatuck Chemical Company upon June 1, 1904 due to an addition in the price of sulfuric acid, which was needed for the process next used for reclaiming obsolescent rubber. The company was soon in the forefront of the chemical industry in the United States. Naugatuck Chemical remained a additional of the U.S. Rubber Co. until it gained independence as Uniroyal Chemical Co. They moved their operations to Middlebury, Connecticut in the 1970s.