Darien Connecticut Vintage Retro Embroidered Cotton Cap - Black Logo

The town's name came from a sailor: at the 1820 incorporation the residents couldn't agree, and a local seaman just back from Darién, Panama suggested the name that stuck.

The Pond-Weed House (c. 1696) is the oldest house in town; the Bates-Scofield Homestead (c. 1736) is the Darien Historical Society museum on the Boston Post Road.

Why People Visit Darien Connecticut

• Visit the Mather Homestead on Stephen Mather Road, the 1778 farmhouse built by Deacon Joseph Mather and lived in by the Mather family ever since — birthplace of the family that produced Stephen Tyng Mather, the founding director of the U.S. National Park Service in 1916. The Homestead opened as a public museum in 2017.
• Visit the Bates-Scofield Homestead on the Boston Post Road, the c. 1736 saltbox-style colonial home that is the Darien Historical Society museum — with the 1827 Scofield Barn reunited to the house in 2008.
• Look for the Pond-Weed House on the Post Road at Hollow Tree Ridge — the c. 1696-1700 saltbox that is the oldest house in Darien.
• See the 1934 Arthur Gibson Hull Federal Arts Project mural at Darien Town Hall depicting the July 22, 1781 Tory raid on the Middlesex Parish Meetinghouse — dedicated by Whitney Museum director Juliana Force in 1935 as among the highest-quality Public Works Art Project paintings in the country.
• Visit Darien Library on the Post Road — founded 1894, current building opened 2009, one of the most-cited public libraries in Connecticut.
• Walk the Boston Post Road Historic District through Darien Center — the colonial-era stage road between Boston and New York that George Washington rode in 1789.
• Relax at Pear Tree Point Beach on the Five Mile River side of town — sandy beach, gentle water, harbor scenery on the Sound.
• Swim at Weed Beach on Noroton Bay — family-friendly shoreline with picnic lawns, tennis courts, and playgrounds.
• Walk Tilley Pond Park downtown — bridges, ducks, and easy paths a block from the Post Road.
• Stroll Cherry Lawn Park, the nature-trail park tucked into the residential streets north of downtown.
• Walk the historic Tokeneke neighborhood on the western shoreline — the 1899 estate association laid out around the Cedar Gate and Delafield-era estates south of the Post Road.
• Drive through Noroton Heights and Long Neck Point to see the late-19th- and early-20th-century summer-home neighborhoods that grew after the railroad opened the town to New York.
• Time a Metro-North trip from Grand Central to Darien Depot to see the commuter rhythm that has shaped the town since 1848 — the Mather family's century-and-a-half pattern of office in Manhattan, home on the Sound.