And the town still belongs to its minutemen. H. Daniel Webster, a young sculptor who settled in Westport in 1906, modeled his militiaman on First Selectman Lewis P. Wakeman; Tiffany & Co. cast the bronze, and on June 17, 1910 — Bunker Hill Day, chosen deliberately — over a thousand people came by road, train, and trolley for a clambake, a parade, and the unveiling above the beach the town had secured for the public in 1902. A pair of government cannons, placed at Compo in 1901, already guarded the shore. Webster's statue is one of only four known minuteman monuments in the country, it appears on the town flag, and Westporters still dress him for the seasons — a Santa cap in December, rabbit ears at Easter.
Our Westport logo carries the same emblem every Merlin Classics Connecticut town wears — an oyster above "Connecticut, Est. 1636," the colony's founding year, rendered in hand-printed black and white with a worn, vintage feel. The oyster is the shoreline state's mark, the through-line that ties Westport to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Westport is everything around it: the landing at Compo, the Minute Man on the bluff, the Saugatuck running down to the Sound. On a tee or a cap it reads less like a souvenir and more like a small piece of the Connecticut coast — Est. 1636, worn plain.
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.
