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
- Explore Sherwood Island State Park, Connecticut's first state park — 238 acres of beach, salt marsh, and woodland on Long Island Sound, with swimming, fishing, and birdwatching.
- Find the Machamux Boulder on the old Common at Green's Farms Road near Morningside Drive, the monument marking the original 1648 settlement.
- See the Green's Farms Congregational Church, the parish society's 1853 meeting house on Hillandale Road carrying a continuous history since 1711.
- Drive Beachside Avenue past historic shoreline estates, with the Sound on one side and salt marsh on the other.
- Walk the quiet shoreline lanes around Frost Point — named for Bankside Farmer Daniel Frost — and the marsh edges of Sasco Creek.
- Catch the Metro-North New Haven Line at Greens Farms Station for a commuter-rail glimpse of the neighborhood's daily rhythm between New York and the Connecticut shoreline.
