About 1,850 British troops under General William Tryon landed at Compo Beach on April 25, 1777, to raid Danbury; returning militia fought them at the Battle of Compo Hill, and more than one hundred Continentals fell in the raid's engagements.
Peace returned the town to its river. The Saugatuck River shipping village grew into a busy little port — sloops and schooners working Long Island Sound to New York — and in 1835 the villagers decided their harbor deserved its own government: led by Daniel Nash, 130 residents petitioned to incorporate a new town, drawn from parts of Norwalk, Fairfield, and Weston, and Westport was born on May 28, 1835. The village kept its salt-water character; the 1884 swing bridge across the Saugatuck — known to everyone as the Cribari Bridge — still turns beside the old shipping quarter, and the Bridge Street district beside it is on the National Register.
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.
