No one wants to be older than New England towns, which have turned the rivalry over their founding years into sport. I can almost hear Boston (est. 1630) trash-talking Providence, R.I. (1636).

Among Connecticut communities, Glastonbury can hold its own at more than 300 years old, but it earns extra points for some neighbors who roamed nearby shores for many millennia.

The Connecticut River Valley has hosted various bipeds, from Godzillas with three toes and sharp claws to Homo sapiens with two feet and a hoe. During the early Colonial years, Glastonbury, just south of Hartford, and Rocky Hill, across the river and the site of roughly 2,000 dinosaur tracks, were part of Wethersfield. Both eventually broke away but remained close, connected by a ferry and the thread of time.

The Connecticut River divides Rocky Hill and Glastonbury, but you can go from bank to bank aboard the nation’s oldest ferry in continuous use. According to the historical signs on the Glastonbury side, public transportation has been offered between here and there since 1655. Modes of mobility included a pole-pushed raft, a horse treadmill, a steam-powered vessel and today, a diesel tugboat that pulls a three-car flatboat.

The ferry takes only four minutes, puttering 600 yards from start to finish. And at $1 per trip, you won’t feel guilty for frivolously riding it back and forth.

Only a short drive from the ferry stop, Dinosaur State Park contains one of North America’s largest concentrations of dino prints. The tracks were discovered in 1966 by a bulldozer operator who wisely stopped his vehicle before turning the ancient site into brownie crumble.

One section of 1,500 prints remains hidden beneath a thick blanket of grass while it awaits a protective roof. A few prints, though, are left exposed, allowing visitors to make plaster of Paris imprints (some materials required). Silly me, I’d neglected to bring 10 pounds of casting material and a quart of cooking oil. But I could still press my hand against a Eubrontes print, which brought home to me that if I ever ran into one, I’d be as small and vulnerable as an acorn.

Unlike wolves and teenagers, dinosaurs didn’t travel in packs. They also didn’t walk in straight lines, as you can see in the indoor arena of 500 prints. Enclosed by walls with “Land of the Lost” backdrops, the tracks run willy-nilly across the floor, a wild dance party frozen mid-beat. Yet as we all know, the party wouldn’t last forever.

Unlike the dinosaurs, Glastonbury adapted to change, a smart move if you want to avoid extinction.

“There are a lot of towns that are old, but Glastonbury is different,” said Jim Bennett, executive director of the Historical Society of Glastonbury. “It was involved in all the major movements – abolitionist, women suffragist, every war.”

The day I visited, the historical society resembled a flea market hit by a hurricane as the staff prepared for an upcoming juried antiques show on the adjacent Hubbard Green. But I could still make out some of the exhibits among the towers of china and toys for budding sheriffs.

On one wall, I learned of the amazing Smith sisters, a quintet of 19th-century Gloria Steinems who were as outspoken and intellectual as any man of that era. When officials decided to raise the property taxes of only the last two surviving sisters and a pair of widows, the siblings agreed to pay under one condition: that women be given the right to vote. Abby Hadassah Smith, then 76, even climbed into a wagon outside Town Hall to trumpet the cause. The case reached the state Supreme Court, but the judges wormed out of a decisive ruling, agreeing that the tax would be dropped along with the demand for suffrage.

While the women were busy fighting for equality, some of the menfolk were working the land.

The area is ripe with peach and cherry orchards, as well as fields of strawberries, many run by families who came from similarly hilly Italian regions.