Two centuries on, the shoreline gave Connecticut a different kind of landmark: Sherwood Island, where the state's first land purchases in 1914 created what would become, after a long public battle, Connecticut's first state park — 238 acres of beach, salt marsh, and woodland on the Sound, right in the Greens Farms section of Westport. A quiet shoreline enclave with three and a half centuries behind it, Greens Farms still holds the promise of the name the Pequot gave it.
Machamux — the beautiful land, since 1648. Before it was Greens Farms, this stretch of the Long Island Sound shoreline was Machamux, "the beautiful land," the name the Pequot gave the salt marsh, the meadows, and the water between what are now Frost Point and the Fairfield town line. In 1648 the Town of Fairfield sanctioned five English farmers to "sit down and inhabit at Machamux," and they bought their home lots from the Pequot — Thomas Newton, Henry Gray, John Green, Daniel Frost, and Francis Andrews, remembered ever after as the Bankside Farmers because they settled on the banks of the Sound. Theirs was the first English settlement in what would become Westport, and Greens Farms remains its oldest neighborhood.
Why People Visit Greens Farms Connecticut
Greens Farms offers calm beaches, a nature preserve, and village charm steeped in colonial history. Visitors come for the quiet shoreline, the first-state-park beach at Sherwood Island, and the sense of a place that has held its name and its character since 1648. It is a subtle, restful corner of coastal Connecticut, balanced between the salt marsh and three and a half centuries of heritage.
