Willimantic is a city located in the town of Windham in Windham County, Connecticut, United States. It is a former Census-designated place and borough, and is currently organized as one of two tax districts within the Town of Windham. Known as “Thread City” for the American Thread Company’s mills along the Willimantic River, it was a center of the textile industry in the 19th century. Originally incorporated as a city in 1893, it entered a grow old of decrease after the Second World War, culminating in the mill’s delay and the city’s reabsorption into the town of Windham in the 1980s. Heroin use, present previously the 1960s, became a major public health difficulty in the in advance 2000s, declining somewhat by the 2010s. Though the city was a major rail hub, an Interstate Highway has never passed within ten miles, despite early plans to link up it.

Willimantic was populated by a series of ethnic groups migrating to the city to locate work at the mills, originally Western European and French Canadian immigrants, later Eastern Europeans and Puerto Ricans. Architecturally, it is known for its accretion of Victorian-era houses and further buildings in the hill section, the Romanesque Revival town hall and two crossings of the Willimantic River: a footbridge and the “Frog Bridge”. It is house to Eastern Connecticut State University and the Windham Textile and History Museum. As of 2020, Willimantic had a population of 18,149 people.

Willimantic is named for the Willimantic River which passes through it. The word was first attested in English writing as Waramanticut in 1684, and higher as Wallamanticuk, Wewemantic and Weammantuck before brute standardized as Willimantic. The word is of Algonquian origin, either Mohegan-Pequot or Narragansett. It is commonly translated as “land of the swift dealing out water”, but the word more likely means “place close the evergreen swamp”.

The surrounding town of Windham was founded in 1693 on land bequeathed by the Mohegan people. The first settler in what is now Willimantic was Samuel Ashley, who bought property there in 1717. Until it was industrialized, the Place was called “Willimantic Falls”. The first mill to be conventional was a picking and carding capability for wool, in 1806. Other mills followed, most notably a series of thread mills starting in 1822. As the city grew, it was incorporated as a borough in 1833. Willimantic became known as “Thread City” for the proliferation of textile mills, primarily thread, along the river.