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.
The story of Machamux remains central to the neighborhood's identity. The Common that the Bankside Farmers laid out survives as a small landscaped park on Green's Farms Road, marked by the Machamux Boulder — a monument to the original 1648 settlement. Stories passed down through generations recall the shoreline's abundance of clams and oysters, the long unbroken life of the parish, and the wartime resilience that rebuilt the church after the Revolutionary raid. Fact and memory braid together along this coast, anchoring Greens Farms in more than three centuries of Connecticut history.
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.
