Long before the shipyards, the point belonged to the Pequot, who knew it as Nauyang — 'point of land' — and used it as a summer fishing and camping ground, documented here as early as 1614. The Pequot were forced from this coast in 1655, in the aftermath of the Pequot War; the removal was a dispossession, and it should be named as one. The village still carries the Pequot name it was given, and the Mashantucket and Eastern Pequot nations remain part of southeastern Connecticut today. Noank's story begins on Pequot ground.
The village that the shipwrights and fishing families built is remarkably intact. The Noank Historic District — listed on the National Register in 1979 — preserves a dense run of mid-to-late nineteenth-century cottages in Greek Revival, Gothic, and Stick-Eastlake styles, lining the winding lanes of the point with picturesque woodwork and iron fences. The Noank Baptist Church of 1867 still crowns the high ground, though its twin towers were lost in the great hurricane of 1938. And every year since 1876 the village has held one of the longest continuously running Memorial Day parades in the country.
Why People Visit Noank
Noank rewards visitors who like their shoreline quiet and real — a working harbor instead of a boardwalk, a dense historic village instead of a strip. People come for the boatyards and the lobster shacks at the water's edge, for the walk through the cottage-lined historic district, and for the view out to the Sound from the end of the point. It is peaceful, photogenic, and unmistakably a Connecticut fishing village.
