The war came to Westport by water. On the evening of April 25, 1777, some twenty-six British ships anchored off Compo Beach and landed about 1,850 troops under General William Tryon, who marched inland and burned the Continental supply depot at Danbury. The countryside rose behind them. On the return march the militia made the British pay, first at Ridgefield and then at the Battle of Compo Hill above the beach, where the redcoats finally cleared their way back to the ships with a bayonet charge. More than one hundred Continentals fell in the raid's engagements, among them General David Wooster, mortally wounded rallying his men.
Three old roads stitch the town together. The Boston Post Road — the colonial mail road, now US Route 1 — crosses the Saugatuck downtown, and mid-century travelers knew Westport by a roadside landmark on it: the Clam Box, a seafood stop whose sign and silhouette were pure New England. The Merritt Parkway sweeps through the backcountry under its famous 1930s bridges, no two alike, and the New Haven Line still carries commuters from the Westport and Saugatuck stations — the same ride to the city that turned onion fields into an arts colony and an arts colony into a suburb.
Why People Visit Westport Connecticut
Westport draws people who love the shore, the arts, and a good story. It is a Revolutionary-War landing site with a Minute Man on the beach, a colonial shipping village turned arts colony, and a Long Island Sound shoreline of beaches, river, and marsh. Visitors come for the rare mix — history you can stand on at Compo, theater and music in the summer, and a refined New England coast an easy train ride from New York.
