Then came the onions. From the 1840s to about 1890 Westport was the leading onion-growing center in the country — the fields ran down to the water, and the Southport Globe varieties bred on these hills commanded top prices in New York. Market boats left weekly with a deck full of barrels and came home with a season's fortune; during the Civil War, Army quartermasters bought Westport's pickled onions by the barrel to fight scurvy in the camps. Blight, cutworms, and western competition ended the boom by the 1890s, and one by one the onion fields were sold off to New Yorkers for summer places — the first draft of the town Westport would become.
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.
Why People Visit Westport Connecticut
- Spend a day at Compo Beach, the town's Sound-front park, and find the Minute Man statue on the bluff above the 1777 landing site — the 1901 commemorative cannons stand nearby.
- Walk the Saugatuck River waterfront and the historic Saugatuck village, the colonial shipping center the town grew from, and cross the 1884 Cribari swing bridge.
- Catch a show at the Westport Country Playhouse, founded in 1931 in a converted 1835 tannery, or a summer concert at the Levitt Pavilion.
- Browse downtown Main Street and the river walk, with shops and galleries near the water.
- Kayak to Cockenoe Island off Compo, or walk Longshore's shoreline paths and public golf course.
- Drive a stretch of the Merritt Parkway for its celebrated 1930s bridges — no two are alike.
- Read up at the Westport Library before exploring the town's deep arts-colony history.
