Two centuries after the Bankside landing, the shoreline gave Connecticut a different kind of landmark. At Sherwood Island — named for the Sherwood family who farmed it — the state's first land purchases in 1914 began what would become, after a long public battle over access and funding, Connecticut's first state park, fully opened in 1937: 238 acres of beach, marsh, and shade trees that taught the state what public shoreline could be. At the island's point stands Connecticut's 9/11 Living Memorial, on the spot where, on that clear morning, the smoke was visible down the Sound.
Today Greens Farms blends shoreline calm with the deepest colonial memory on the Westport coast. Its story runs from Machamux and the five families of 1648, through the burned and rebuilt parish, the onion boats and the railroad, to the first state park and the quiet lanes of the present. Wear a little of the beautiful land.
Why People Visit Greens Farms
- Spend a beach day at Sherwood Island State Park — Connecticut's first state park — and walk out to the point for the 9/11 Living Memorial's long view down the Sound.
- Find the Machamux Boulder on the old Common along Green's Farms Road — the 1648 settlement marked in stone.
- See the Greens Farms Congregational Church, the parish that rebuilt after 1779 and never broke its line.
- Swim the town side at Burying Hill Beach, the small crescent with the big history in its name.
- Walk or fish the marsh edges where the onion boats once loaded, and watch the ospreys work New Creek.
- Ride the New Haven Line to the little Green's Farms station and arrive the way a century of villagers did.
