Because of the remote location of these settlements and the considerable distance to churches, the people petitioned the Connecticut General Court for a new parish in 1725.

[2] The rocky and craggy land that constituted much of the town kept the population low and new settlement at a minimum.

Salem has always been a crossroads town; the old Hartford and New London Turnpike (now Route 85) was a toll road, traveled frequently by legislators during the winters of the 19th century when the Connecticut River was impassable.

Salem became a well-known location upon the founding of Oramel Whittlesey's Music Vale Seminary in 1835.

Students of the school not only learned music, but also provided self-sustenance through farming, as did most Salem households at the time.

Pianos were manufactured up the Hartford and New London Turnpike about two miles (3 km) north from the seminary, at the present location of the firehouse and Maple Shade General Store.

Salem is the site of one of the first rural electrification projects in the country, at the farm of Frederick C. Rawolle Jr. Rawolle was an engineer from New York who retired at the age of 32 after he sold to a major manufacturer the patent rights of an explosive device he had invented to fracture oil wells.

Carr Pond, which today supplies water to the city of New London, was created by Rawolle in 1920 from Fairy Lake as a means of docking his boat near the turnpike.

Rawolle decided to generate his own electricity when he learned that bringing transmission lines to his farm from the city of New London, about 12 miles (19 km) away, would be virtually impossible.

At a cost of about one million dollars, extremely expensive at the time for a single project, a hydroelectric system was completed in 1922.

Airplanes flying from New York to Boston used the glimmering lights of Fairy Lake Farm as guidance.

He died in 1954; the large stone mansion he lived in at the farm is still standing at the end of Horse Pond Road, though it is abandoned.

Hiram Bingham III, from Salem, was an adventurer, U.S. senator, and explorer who rediscovered Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911.

He retrieved artifacts for Yale University, which in 2011 returned many items to Cusco, Peru, pursuant to an agreement with the Peruvian government.

His son, Hiram Bingham IV, was the Vice Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II, and rescued thousands of Jews from death at the Nazi concentration camps.

In 2011 the Simon Wiesenthal Center produced a film tribute to Hiram ("Harry") Bingham IV concerning his life-saving actions during the war.

[3] Over the decades, Salem has slowly progressed from a small and remote farming town to a bedroom community of about 4,000; in the 1990s, it was one of the fastest growing municipalities in the state.

During its early years, Salem had several schoolhouses scattered throughout town, like most New England communities of the time; one is still visible on White Birch Road.

Though effectively canceled, the highway project remains a frequently discussed political issue in the town.