The land along the Saugatuck and the Sound was the homeland of Indigenous people long before the colonists, and the older colonial core of the area — the Bankside farms of the Greens Farms section — dates to the 1640s. But the Westport story turns on the river and the Revolution. The Saugatuck River shipping village grew into a busy little port, and that prosperity is why the British came: the 1777 landing at Compo and the running fight at Compo Hill put Westport on the map of the Revolution. In 1835 the town was formally incorporated as Westport, drawn from parts of Norwalk, Fairfield, and Weston around the harbor and the Post Road.
Where the British came ashore — and the minutemen met them on the way back. On the morning of April 25, 1777, some eighteen hundred British troops landed on the Long Island Sound shore at Compo Beach and marched inland to burn the Continental supply depot at Danbury. On their retreat to the ships, the local militia caught them at the Battle of Compo Hill. More than a century later the town raised a Minute Man on the bluff above the beach to remember the men who stood there. That shore is the heart of Westport, Connecticut — a town that grew up around the Saugatuck River shipping village, became a noted onion-farming center, and then turned into one of America's great arts colonies.
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.
