What’s with the Onions? For half a century, Fairfield’s fame was an onion. The Southport Globe Onion, bred on the coastal hills above Southport Harbor, became one of the most celebrated vegetables in America — by the 1840s onions were the town’s great crop, schooners raced them under sail to the New York markets, and during the Civil War the Union bought them by the hundred-thousand-bushel lot; General Grant reputedly refused to march without them. Then in 1894 cutworms and fungus turned the fields black almost overnight, and the industry died where it stood. The onion money had already built the harbor village and its streetscapes — and every fall Fairfield still drops a giant onion at its festival in the crop’s honor.
On July 7–8, 1779, British forces under General William Tryon landed and burned Fairfield — the courthouse, the churches, and most of the town’s houses were destroyed in two days. Fairfield rebuilt through the Federal era with a confidence that still defines the town center: the Burr Mansion rose again in 1790 on the site of its burned predecessor, the Sun Tavern went up on the green in 1780, the 1794 Town Hall still anchors the historic district, and the Powell House of 1755 stands among the survivors. Greenfield Hill, the inland farming village the raid never reached, kept its colonial streetscape and gained its landmark Congregational Church in 1855 — today the district holds one of the largest concentrations of intact Federal and Colonial homes in New England.
Why People Visit Fairfield Connecticut
- Tour the Fairfield Museum and History Center beside the historic town green — the primary local archive and the place to learn about Roger Ludlow's 1639 founding, the Fundamental Orders, the 1779 burning under General Tryon, the Federal-era rebuild, and the Mary Staples witchcraft trial of 1654.
- Walk the Fairfield Town Green and the post-1779 rebuild blocks along Beach Road and the Old Post Road — the Burr Mansion (1790, town-owned, open for tours), the Sun Tavern (1780), the Powell House (1755, one of the few houses to survive the fire), and the row of Federal-era clapboard houses that rose from the ash.
- Drive or bike up to the Greenfield Hill Historic District — the hill village the British fire spared, with one of the largest concentrations of intact eighteenth and early nineteenth century homes in New England, where Yale president Timothy Dwight wrote his 1794 epic poem "Greenfield Hill."
- Visit the Pequot Library in Southport, the 1894 Romanesque-revival reference library with a long-running antiquarian Pequot War and colonial Connecticut research collection.
- Relax on Jennings Beach, the broad town-owned Sound beach with soft sand, playgrounds, and wide views toward the Norwalk Islands.
- Look offshore for Penfield Reef Lighthouse, lit in 1874, the brick-and-stone tower a mile and a half out in the Sound that has guided shipping past the long submerged reef ever since.
- Walk the Lake Mohegan loop, the inland forest park with short cascades, a swimming hole, and picnic lawns.
- Browse the Old Post Road shops and the downtown blocks linking the green to the train station.
- Stroll through Southport village, the small harbor settlement of Federal-era sea captains' houses on Southport Harbor — Fairfield's quietest National Register district.
